


The Thawing of Winter

by Jade_Masquerade



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:19:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10733991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Masquerade/pseuds/Jade_Masquerade
Summary: Sansa knew Jon married her—married Alayne—for the Vale, or maybe, because of his past, he saw her as a fellow bastard and meant to raise her up the same as his people did for him, how they chose Lord Eddard’s sole surviving son as King in the North. But when she looked at him, she saw nothing of the sort in his eyes, only a flash of desire, the way a man ought to look at his wife, before he steadied his gaze. If this was truly wrong, she wondered, then why did the gods let it feel so right?





	1. Chapter 1

Sansa stood outside the sept beside the Gates of the Moon, thinking of her husband waiting on the dais inside as the spring sun warmed her face. The season arrived early, who knew whether real or a tease, but the plants flowered all the same. A lovely day, if only her guts would refrain from twisting like unruly snakes. 

Her hands shook as she realized she somehow felt more fear now than the first time, her marriage at the behest of the Lannisters. Nothing could be worse than that, she knew, but the tremors persisted. _I must look a fool about to wed the King._

The truth, though, was that she did not know what to expect. She anticipated he would wear a crown, his colors and sigil most likely, and his sword—which one, she did not know. He would be taller now, probably, but as for the rest of him, she was unsure. Even her memories seemed to fail her as she strained to recall images from a lifetime ago. It was said he’d grown older and weathered, that winter, this war, ruling the North, had aged him, that he’d taken wounds, some grievous. 

She knew she was not the same either, no matter what he remembered of her. In the time since they parted, she had been a princess-in-waiting, a disgrace, a traitor, a castoff, a wife, a suspected murderer, a fugitive, a bastard, a niece, a nurse, and now a lady. With each, she played the role, acted the part for her audiences of dubious intentions. Sometimes she wondered if this was yet not another character in a never-ending charade, if there would be an end to the maintenance of this façade. _Who will he wish me to be?_

The chance to wonder evaporated when Petyr stepped up to take her arm. She knew not what to call him now. _Lord Baelish? Father?_ All felt wrong, the former too formal for the man who saved her, helped her escape Cersei’s clutches and King’s Landing and now found a way, however mad, to give Sansa her life back, yet the latter stuck in her throat whenever she tried to utter it. She knew neither what parting words to offer him. _Best regards? Many thanks?_ Those seemed wrong also. 

After all that had happened, she could not bring herself to offer gratitude to him. She knew he would ask for his favor later, ask Jon to repay the priceless debt of returning his long-lost sister, the true heir to the North. Sansa already dreaded when that day would come, and she prayed it would not be today, nor tomorrow, nor until they were home in Winterfell and even then some. No, Petyr, whatever he was to her, was not the person she once thought him to be, not a savior or a liberator, but neither was she, and Sansa wondered if the same went for her soon-to-be husband.

She wore the colors of House Baelish—yellow and black—her colors now, but only until she reached the altar. Littlefinger smiled as they waited, smoothing over the velvet of her maiden’s cloak. 

“You look beautiful, my lady,” he said, taking her hand between his and kissing her once on either cheek. “Fit for a queen.” 

She resisted the urge to shrug away from his touch, which settled at her waist. _He wishes to marry me himself._ The realization was not new. 

Despite the fact that Sansa always dreamed of being a mother, she would rather throw herself from the top-most turret in Winterfell and die childless than marry Petyr or produce his heirs. She’d also dreamt of the moment she’d meet her handsome prince, that magical encounter when their eyes would lock for the first time, but instead she’d had Joffrey, a horrid monster, and now Jon, though kind and a king, whom she’d known since the day she entered this world. She dreamt, too, of the beautiful castle in some warm faraway, exotic place she’d be the lady of, while now she wanted nothing more than to return to the frozen lands and broken walls of Winterfell. And she’d imagined visits to Winterfell so Eddard and Catelyn could know their grandchildren as Sansa had never known her grandparents, but instead they would have solemn walks to the crypts below Winterfell to pay tribute Lord Eddard’s bones and unanswered questions about what became of Lady Catelyn’s. 

There was no time, though, to dwell on the fantasies of her childhood, nor revile the horrors of her recent years, as the doors opened before them. 

The waiting audience stared, and Sansa started to walk. 

She did not see any familiar faces lining the aisle from beneath the netting of her veil, and few of the colors or sigils she knew either. For a moment she feared they recognized her despite the dark hair she wore to conceal her red locks, blackened several times over and done up in the style of the South, and the makeup caked on by her handmaidens this morning, smoothing color over her skin and the lids of her eyes, thickening and lengthening her eyelashes with black. The look was not all that bad, she thought, when she glanced at her image in the reflective glass Ania, her quietest and favorite handmaiden, held up right before she’d had to leave the comforts of her chamber for the unknown outside. 

Yet despite the darker color with which they disguised her, Sansa felt paler with each step, the blood draining from her face. She found herself grateful for the lace that shielded her eyes, though she soon realized it was silly to worry for other reasons. Everyone north of the Riverlands who last saw her now laid dead or disappeared, her father and lady mother, Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon, the entire retinue that left Winterfell, all the friendly hands who she grew up around, perished along with so many others who served her family, whether with sword or serving tray. 

“A grim sacrifice,” Petyr had said, counting the murder of her Aunt Lysa at the hands of that depraved singer and the poor, failed health of unfortunate Sweetrobin amongst those gone, too. “But one that now works in our favor.” 

Even as she hated him, she knew his words true. Any others believed Sansa Stark dead by now, and few would question the Lord Protector of the Vale and the King in the North anyhow. 

It had been a long time since she needed to remind herself of her name, but Sansa knew she would need to when she saw him. They had not seen each other in half as many years as they’d spent together in the first place, and her stomach fluttered with her greatest fear: _Will he even know?_

The aisle stretched cruelly long, giving her unneeded time to think about the absence of their family. At least, if nothing else, Jon would understand that, the feeling of being left alone in the world, of having nearly everything he’d ever loved ripped away. And she imagined perhaps he would understand it even better than she did, having spent a lifetime as an outcast, only to be sent away to the edge of the world to be brought back again and crowned a king. 

Sansa heard stories of Jon’s time at the Wall and how he’d ventured beyond, though most were probably untrue, like as not. Some said Jon had fought dead things come back to life, with flame and blade, or that he himself had become a wildling when he brought the Free Folk back across the Wall, leaving the Night’s Watch to live amongst them, fighting for them, even loving one. More swore Jon had evaded his life commitment of taking the black through death itself, being brought back by blood magic after a mutiny of his men. Still others claimed Jon had become his wolf to escape and to survive, disguised in the skin of another, cleverly concealing himself to plot to avenge his family and the North. 

It really didn’t matter what had happened or how, she supposed. It only mattered that Jon survived when so many others had fallen. Sometimes it seemed like they were the only two who remained, and in many ways, they were. 

Jon had legitimized her himself, though of course without knowing truly, believing he was taking the hand of the natural-born daughter of Petyr Baelish. And then Jon had accepted the offer of marriage, securing the loyalty of the Vale of Arryn now that the line whose name it bore had ceased to exist, long desiring the land which bordered his other holdings of the North and the Riverlands, previously forever out of his reach, having taken no part in this muddling continuation of war and discontent until now. 

_From a bastard to a queen,_ Sansa mused. It would not be the strangest, nor by far the worst, thing that had ever happened to her. Oh, of all the ironies—that her quiet bastard brother from the Night’s Watch would be made King in the North, while she had sunk to her status as the baseborn issue of some nameless tavern wench; that sullen Jon Snow who seemed to enjoy nothing more than polishing his swords in solitude would lead an army, recapture their home, and earn the title of King while she who had been raised for such a position from birth instead found herself locked away in a tower on top of a mountain and caring for sickly little Sweetrobin until his ailments overcame him. She supposed at least she would finally get her misguided wish of being queen. 

Certainly it gave everyone what they wanted, but it still seemed wrong. As wrong as the King in the North marrying in a sept, of all places, but Petyr insisted they follow the traditions of the new gods. Another loophole of his making, of course. 

“The King can annul it then, if he likes, once you are safely away and your hair grows out bright, beautiful red again,” Petyr said with the smile he must have used to woo Catelyn and Lysa. _And then what?_ she’d wondered, staring back at his saccharine smile. _Then I can marry you instead?_

The people would be forgiving, Sansa knew, and the old gods, his gods, _their_ gods, she supposed, not offended. 

They reached the front and paused before the raised platform in between the towering statues of the Father and Mother. Petyr removed the veil she wore, plain black to match her maiden’s cloak, simple netting not dissimilar from the one he used in her escape from King’s Landing, minus the encrusting of benign jewels and those not so harmless, those which had been used to bring down Joffrey. 

But there was no sense in remembering that now, no reason to ruminate on what could have been, so Sansa looked up. 

Jon’s striking grey eyes, so like her father’s, like Arya’s, the eyes of the true Starks of Winterfell, stared back.


	2. Chapter 2

Jon’s striking grey eyes, so like her father’s, like Arya’s, the eyes of the true Starks of Winterfell, stared back. After a few long, long seconds, he finally blinked, his lips falling open as he stifled a gasp. 

For a moment, he was Jon her once-brother, who Sansa had played maidens and monsters with in the forest of Winterfell a lifetime ago, when the most difficult problem to solve had been who would play the knight in shining armor who saved the princess in the Weirwood tree that day, if it would be Robb or Jon, or sometimes even Theon, when he’d been permitted to play and had wanted to, before he grew too old and shifted his focus from princesses in trees to wenches in taverns. He stood there as Jon her half-brother, too, the one she dissociated with after her mother warned her about spending time with him, explained that he would never be like her or Robb or Arya or any of them, that he was no Stark, that his place was not there at Winterfell. 

He staggered, nearly stumbling down the step he stood atop, hand on the hilt of his sword, carved to look like the white wolf of his cloak, and Sansa prayed to all seven gods, the gods of the North, the Red God, the Drowned God, and every god she knew that everyone witnessing their union believed he was merely quite taken with her beauty. 

Another moment of silence on his part passed, and panic rose in her chest. Was this what anger looked like? She didn’t think she’d ever seen that expression on Jon; how would she know? Would he refuse to say the words he must? 

Then he was Jon the King again, his face neutral, extending his hand to help her up the last step. 

“S—sweet lady,” he murmured. She wondered if his heart thudded and his stomach twisted like hers beneath the polished leather jerkin and direwolf cloak he wore, clad in utilitarian clothes of the north rather than the rich fineries of the south. 

_It was the only way,_ Sansa wished she could tell him as they stood side by side in front of the altars of the Father and the Mother, listening to the septon and saying their vows before Jon’s people and those who believed they were hers. _I wanted to go home, and this was the only way._

She stole glances at Jon as the septon rambled on about the blessings with which they had been provided, thanking the Maiden for Alayne’s beauty, the Warrior for Jon’s battle prowess, invoking the Crone to light the shared path ahead of their life together. Jon looked every bit the king she dreamed of marrying someday as a child, before the Lannisters took their father and slaughtered him in front of her, before Robb gathered the North and marched off to war, before their family had been scattered and murdered. His bronze crown glinted in the stain-glassed light of the sept, bright against the black of his hair, the metal as beaten and twisted as the paths they had followed since they separated in Winterfell so long ago. The rest of him looked just the kind of king she would have expected Jon to be: stately, and strong, and handsome, especially with how his beard had grown in. She swallowed the lump in her throat that formed when she realized that right now, at this moment, he was nothing more to her than a beautiful stranger about to pledge his sword, his life to her.

Her mouth repeated the words of the septon, but her ears did not hear them, nor those Jon said. The weight of the direwolf cloak thrown over her shoulders shielded her like a comfort in this storm, nothing like the crimson trap of the Lannister lion or the golden lie of Petyr’s mockingbird. The crown came next, one to match Jon’s, and it didn’t feel like a shackle so much as armor. 

And then the ceremony ended almost as soon as she felt it had begun, the septon declaring them “one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever,” murmurs and cheers ringing up from the audience. Jon gently tilted her chin and blocked their view with his hand, placing a chaste kiss on her cheek that must have looked anything but to the rest as the whistles and applause of their witnesses grew louder. 

The feast followed, long tables set up in the hall beside the Gates of the Moon. Sansa found herself and Jon accompanied there by a cascade of well-wishers, all of them buzzing with offers of congratulations and unnecessary bows and curtsies. Jon thanked them politely while she chose to trail behind, averting her eyes lest anyone notice the similarity between their mannerisms, their accents, anything, something that marked them, despite her disguise and her Tully eyes, as so evidently Stark. 

She did not walk alone, though, since Ghost, who had been barred from the sept, twined himself around her, nuzzling her hand. These people may not have known Sansa Stark lived, but he certainly did. 

“How strange,” one man clad in the arms and bright blue of House Piper commented. “He usually doesn’t take well to outsiders.”

“He knows Lady Alayne is his to protect now, too,” replied a knight wearing the burning yellow tower of House Grafton. 

“ _Queen_ Alayne,” a lady who seemed out of place in flowing pink silk corrected, and Sansa tried to stifle a shudder. Once it had been all she wanted, and now she could not imagine a title less desirable. 

She reached the front of the hall and lifted her skirts to climb up beside Jon on the dais. He turned to her, but he was interrupted before he could speak. 

“The King in the North!” someone shouted, and the crowd followed, echoing the chant, goblets rising across the hall with ale and wine slopping over the edges. “The Queen in the North!” 

After another rousing circle of toasts, they sat for the first of many courses: heaps of fresh fruit, rounds of cheese-and-onion pie, platters of fish, slices of bird roasted with herbs, pork cutlets encrusted with nuts and spices, plates piled precariously with vegetables and baskets overflowing with bread. No one seemed to acknowledge or care winter had come and could very well return again with a vengeance. 

Sansa ate near naught, instead scanning the hall for familiar faces, but most of the men who accompanied Jon on the journey to the Vale were new, the old who hadn’t been killed in King’s Landing with her father either slaughtered by the Boltons and Freys at the Twins with Robb or sent away to face the Ironborn or more formidable foes. 

While she had spent time changing her identity, she knew Jon had been defending and rebuilding Winterfell, rebuilding and defending. She’d kept her ears open for word of his victories as he swept in to take back their home. He started by driving the Boltons out, the sacred place of their childhood desecrated by the presence of Robb’s betrayers, and destroying their traitorous house for their crimes. Next he sent his men to push the Ironborn back into the sea, but there was much and more yet to be done. The North itself still sought to collar the cold creatures of the night and rogue wildlings in the far reaches of the Gift, and other threats were never far. 

There had been queer reports from the South, too, about a new High Septon and militant religious orders taking up arms and Queen Cersei professing her faith and repenting for her sins, running naked in the streets and driven mad. That much, at least, Sansa believed. Sometimes it felt as though she herself had never stopped running since Joffrey clutched his throat and keeled over, but with a crown on her head now, Jon at her side, and Cersei’s attention elsewhere, it was strange yet comforting to think of those days as finished. 

They didn’t speak much, eating through courses of quail and trenchers of stew and plates of roasted potatoes, until dessert finally came, and Jon beckoned over one of the serving men and asked him to fetch a plate of lemon cakes. 

“My—my lord, I mean, Your Grace, there are none,” he stuttered. “I mean, we haven’t any prepared. Lemons are in short supply with winter—”

“Having come, yes, I am aware,” Jon said in a strong voice she hardly recognized. “Please, though, for my queen.” 

He bowed and scurried away. Jon squeezed her hand, his touch warm. “You still do like them?” 

She nodded. “Very much so.”

He smiled, real and true, for the first time that night, and she felt her lips curve in the same expression, one she’d worn painted on for years, but this time genuine. 

The songs soon started to play, many of them familiar from the Great Hall when Lord Eddard entertained guests in Winterfell. Sansa remembered Robb spinning her around, her begging him to dance properly, like a true lord and his lady, while Arya pleaded for him to do just the opposite, to toss her in the air and cause chaos in the way only children can get away with. Jon had spent most of those nights relegated to the back of the hall, first as a sulky boy, and then a churlish teenager, but he seemed to prefer it that way, or at least that was what she always told herself. 

He didn’t look like either of those now, though, as he stood and held out a hand to her, but rather a man, in name and appearance. 

She quickly discovered he’d learned to dance somehow, not as well as Harry the Heir or even Robb had been taught in preparation for his lordly duties, but with passable proficiency and in time with the music. 

“You finally learned,” she said, beaming, even as she thought of how at this moment she probably would have preferred the dances of her childhood, the opposite of prim and proper steps, being spun around until she didn’t know up from down, filled with twirls and spins. 

“I did,” he said, grimacing in a way that told her the process had been far from enjoyable. “I had to when I realized there are expectations for a king to fulfill and advantages to these feasts and being out on the floor.” 

Of course, there was the Jon she knew, submitting himself to doing something as dreaded as dancing if it was what he was supposed to do, if it gave him a strategic advantage, if it made him fit in and look the part of an honorable king. 

The music slowed, and he pulled her close in a dance that needed no knowledge of certain steps, one that would have likely been considered indecent had it been anyone else besides the King and his Queen. 

“This is not the first time I’ve seen a ghost,” he murmured against her hair, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask whom else he had seen. 

“We all have,” she responded instead, or at least she had, too, on occasion. Her father and mother, Robb, Bran and Rickon, and then there were the more sinister apparitions: Joffrey, pointing her way and clutching his throat, Lysa, crawling back out the moon door, her dwarf husband, drunk and sitting across from her in their locked chamber on their wedding night, Jeyne Poole’s wild eyes as they ripped her away. It had been years since she had worked up the courage to ask Petyr what had become of her, and his cool smile, one that didn’t quite meet his eyes, told her all she wanted to know. She held back a shiver. 

She saw the way the others on the floor, those who lined the tables on the sides, still eating and drinking wine, looked at Jon and looked at her—Alayne, their queen. It wasn’t disappointment for the girl who betrayed her father, their liege lord, or disgust for the maid who married the Imp, or mistrust for the accomplice to the murder of King Joffrey, even if all of those things weren’t as they seemed. It was with hope, and honor, and reverence, all the good things she’d always wanted to be. Did she even want to be Sansa Stark anymore, when she could have all of that instead? 

They drifted apart, lords cutting in to ask for a dance with her, ladies doing the same for Jon. Sansa took a few turns with the others, a massive commander who appeared to a distant uncle of the Umbers, one of Lord Manderly’s handsome grandsons, and a young boy who couldn’t have been older than Rickon, before the crowd clamored for the king to return to his queen. Jon obliged, sweeping Sansa back into his arms, and she found herself startled by how pleasant it was to return to his familiar, gentle touch. 

He sweated now beneath his thick jerkin and sleeved shirt in the warm spring air, and it reminded her of watching him practice swords in the yard with Robb or riding in the godswood with their father. Jon had always been good at those things, unlike her, and even though she’d scoffed then and admonished Arya for trying to be like him, she’d always admired the grace with which he could parry a blade or gallop on his favorite horse. 

Jon tightened his grip around her waist as a few raucous men weaved across the floor in search of partners, and her cheeks colored with a familiar flush, the same she’d felt with Harry Hardyng, when Petyr had told her to make him love her, and Sansa had suddenly realized just how she wanted to love _him._

She remembered dancing at the last feast she attended with Harry, who had been well practiced, moving her across the floor with ease with his long strides, even if his insistent hands lacked the tenderness of Jon’s. And the things they had done after… she felt her cheeks further inflame. Thankfully, Jon seemed too engrossed in avoiding stepping on her feet to notice. 

“You agreed,” she said, pushing her memories of Harry aside, even as she wished she could tell Jon the truth of that matter. As a child, she supposed, she had always known it would come to this one day, an arranged marriage, with an alliance and the good of Winterfell in mind, and not her own personal love or happiness. The idea had been so routine, so expected, she had never even questioned it; quite the opposite, in fact, she anticipated it, daydreaming about the kind, handsome prince or lord who she would give her hand to, how they would learn to love each other over time, and imagining their children growing up in a castle, learning the ways of lordship and ladyship as she and her brothers and Arya had, but that fairytale, like so many others, was not meant to be. She remembered begging her father to let her take Joffrey’s hand as well, and nothing made her grow up so fast as seeing her life for what it really was, a pawn to be used in this grand game. 

Jon had never seemed to share such a dream, though. She wasn’t sure what he had hoped for himself, all those years ago. Surely it had not been the Wall, nor a crown, or marrying his sister. 

“I wanted to do my duty for my people,” he said. He left the rest unspoken. Unlike Robb, he could have added. Or he could have shared the real reason, the one she already knew for why he had married her: for the full might of the Vale. 

“Are you angry?” she asked, choosing every word carefully. 

“No, I could never be angry with you,” he said, pulling away and frowning. “Are you with me?” 

“No,” she said. She thought of the time she’d spent in King’s Landing, furious with Robb for threatening the crown and Joffrey, livid when Cersei confined her to the Red Keep, and finally beside herself when she realized she would likely never see Robb, never see any of her family, even Jon, the brother she always denied, pushed away, denounced, ever again. Finding out he lived, that he sought to take a wife, and her in particular, had lit hope again where any kind died long ago. “Of course not.” 

“Do you hate me,” he asked, “for not searching you out?” 

The song changed, the music quickening again with the rhythmic beat of a drum, but Jon held her still in a slow sway, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. “How would you have known I lived? It was our intent to make it seem not so.” 

He shook his head. “I could have done more, before it seemed there were none of you left. I fought a war to get Arya back. I _died_ trying to get her back. I could have at least made an attempt. There were rumors…” 

She cupped his cheek, wishing she could smooth her fingers over the lines that formed between his brows. “None of us would have expected you to give your life. And do you think Robb would have wanted you labeled as a deserter? Or Father for you to besmirch your honor? I certainly would not have wanted you to give up all you had for naught.” 

“No,” he said, his voice firm. “It was not for naught. Because of the battle I fought, we took back Winterfell. House Stark punished the Boltons for their crimes. I fulfilled my duty to the Night’s Watch. Only the gods know why, but they crowned me King in the North. And that brought me to you. So aye, it was all for something.” 

She let him rest his forehead against hers, the closest they’d been all night, perhaps the closest ever in their lives, all well enough because it hid the tears that threatened to form in her eyes. 

Jon’s lips moved inches from hers when he spoke again. “Do you hate me for wearing the crown that is rightfully yours?” 

“No, Jon. I could never hate you.”

“You did,” he said. 

“I…” she wished to deny it, but it was true. “I’m sorry, Jon. I was a stupid child. I didn’t mean it.” 

They twirled in silence, spun apart and together again.

“And you?” he asked. “You agreed, and you knew.” 

“I wanted to go home,” she said. 

He shook his head. “Winterfell is still in ruins. It’ll be years.” 

“That’s not what I meant by home.” She looked up, and for the briefest moment, she saw it on his face—the determination, the resolve, the expression of fortitude she knew only from the North, markedly different from the superficial smiles and insincere words of the South. It gave her the strength to continue on. “I thought you might run when you saw me.” 

“I thought I might, too, until I saw it was you.” His smile warmed her, and she realized she’d probably seen him light up more today alone than all their years growing up combined. 

The song switched again, and this time, Petyr edged into their space. “A last dance for a father with his daughter?” 

Jon scowled in response to his tipped wink. “I think not,” he said, his voice cold with authority, turning away with a movement more appropriate for averting swords in the yard than waltzing on the floor. She tried to ignore the way Jon gripped her tighter and seemed to hold her closer now, the exhilaration his protectiveness seemed to awaken. 

Petyr settled back on the dais, watching them with a frostiness in his green-grey eyes Sansa had never experienced directed at her before. _I’m just another piece to him,_ she reminded herself. _And Jon, king or not, is too._ But he’d taught her to play the game, and while she failed with Harry Hardyng, she would not let that happen again. 

“I don’t like him,” Jon breathed in her ear, moving out of view from where Petyr poured himself more wine, keeping his eyes on them over the edge of his cup. “But he brought me to you, and that is more than I can say for any of our other foes.” 

_“And cursed be the ones who come between,”_ she recalled the words from the ceremony. She thought of Cersei, Joffrey, Tyrion, Harry, Petyr— _Yes, cursed be them all._

When she drew her focus to the music again, she noticed the songs had started to move past the likes of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” and even the fairly respectable “Two Hearts that Beat as One” and gone right into “Her Little Flower” and “The Lusty Lad.” 

Jon glanced around the hall, his frown deepening. “We should be going soon. Before…” 

She’d forgotten, somehow. _The Bedding._ Suddenly, she was aware of all the eyes on them—the women giggling behind Jon’s back, the men who swigged more wine as they waited, and Petyr’s still, hiding his true intentions as always. 

“I won’t let them touch you,” Jon gritted. He glared up at Lord Baelish again. “Vile—”

“It’s all right, Jon,” she said, running a soothing hand down his arm, where his body had stiffened in anger. “Let them. It’s a tradition. An expectation, like the dancing. They don’t mean any harm.” 

“The Queen Took Off Her Sandal, the King Took Off His Crown” began to play, and she knew there wouldn’t be time to explain to him, to get Jon to understand the things she’d learned as Alayne before they were separated. And indeed, an exorbitantly busty woman with long blonde ringlets peeled Jon away from her, while Sansa fell backward into the hands of the Umber man she’d danced with earlier. 

They stripped away the white direwolf cloak and undid the top of her dress and slid it along with the thick skirts down over her hips until all that remained were her shift over her corset and smallclothes. The Sansa who always dreamt of her wedding to her handsome prince would have been horrified, but Alayne laughed at their ribald jokes and returned their japes, deflecting their advances with humor and wondering aloud how the king was faring with his own undressing. When she saw him again, Jon had also lost his outer layer somewhere along the way from the hall to their makeshift chambers, wearing just the white linen tunic now, his chest bare from where the laces had been torn away, and it looked as though someone at attempted to do the same for his breeches as well. 

“Enough, enough,” Jon called as the two giggling, guffawing hordes converged in the tight hallway. 

Sansa found herself pushed up against Jon’s chest, and a moment later both of them were shoved with much laughter together into the bedchamber.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sansa,” Jon reached for her the second the door was bolted shut. His embrace was warmer than ever now that so much of his bare skin pressed against her, like the strong walls of Winterfell where the hot springs ran through. 

“Shh,” she covered his mouth with her hand. “You mustn’t ever use that name. I am Alayne, always Alayne here, Alayne Baelish, daughter of Lord Petyr of the Vale…”

“It is only us,” he countered when she removed her hand. “And I am the king. Let it be good for something. Let it be good for this.”

He clutched her to him, and Sansa let herself be held, hardly resisting the urge to bury herself deeper against his neck. She didn’t know how long it had been since she felt comfort in the touch of another—long before the dutiful kisses Petyr required of her, the clammy hand in hers of sick Sweetrobin, the attempted gropes of Marillion when Lysa had lived. King’s Landing, too, had been fraught with unwelcome attentions—punishments at the hands of the Kingsguard courtesy of Joffrey, her hand in Tyrion’s as they spoke of her mother and Robb’s deaths, even her maids dressing her in the styles Cersei demanded. Perhaps she had not received such affections since she left Winterfell as a girl, the last time her mother brushed her hair, hugged her and kissed her goodbye before they rode south. 

Not that the way Jon’s hand gently caressed her hair now reminded her of any of those moments, nor the way he held her waist with the other. She long had known what she must ask Jon to do here tonight in their bedchamber—what surprised her, though, was how much she truly wanted him to do it. 

“Do not worry,” Petyr had assured her moons ago, chuckling in response to her hardly disguised shock at the revelation of his plan and her insistence Jon would never follow through. “There are other ways of producing an heir. Of course, the Targaryens practiced this way for thousands of years and ruled supreme for a great number of those…” 

_But we are wolves, not dragons,_ she thought, even as she questioned if the wolf still ran in her blood. Was she truly a mockingbird now, as her maiden’s cloak displayed? She had charmed those of the Vale with her voice, her wit, but she never allowed the act to pierce her core, the wolf at heart, so she told herself. The Hound had always called her little bird though, and perhaps he had been right. 

“And—and—the—the—” she’d stumbled over the words as she continued to question Petyr about his conspiracy to return her to the North, much unlike the proper lady her mother and Septa taught her to be. 

“The bedding?” Petyr provided, his voice soft but sickly sweet. “Your brother is a very clever and honorable man. I’m sure he will find a way. But don’t doubt, sweetling, that he has the same base urges when presented with a beautiful girl as any other.” 

She pictured Jon taking his dagger from the bedside table, where it rested beside a flagon of wine and a few flickering candles, and slashing it across his palm, drawing the open wound over the sheets. He would do it without question, she knew, without hesitation, but the thought made her stomach twist. Because she had refused to tell Littlefinger why Harry had lost interest, so either way, whether Jon wanted to or not, there would be no blood to prove her chaste. 

When Jon spoke, his lips brushed against the shell of her ear. “I had hope a hundred times and lost it looking for you, for all of you, any of you. After what has happened, I thought surely…” 

“I’m safe,” she said. One day, she would tell him everything, maybe one day back in Winterfell when they were truly alone so she could let the tears fall. But not now, not tonight, not on the day she shed her bastard name, the one that had been foisted on her, the one Petyr had given her in place of her mother’s. At least for a minute, an hour, a night, however long, she could be Sansa again behind these closed doors. “And with you.” 

She took a step back, running her eyes over him in the candlelight. He looked as enticing here in his underthings and the shreds of his clothing as he had in all the finery at the feast. She wanted to think about how he had grown up handsome, about how much he had changed, but she found she couldn’t really even remember the Jon of their younger years anymore. Whoever he’d been, whatever he had looked like, a king, her king, instead stood in his place. 

She reached up and slid one strap of her shift off her shoulder, and then the other, letting it cascade to the floor. 

He took his turn now to back away, even as she saw something there that hadn’t existed before: heat in his eyes, the flick of his tongue over his lips. Or perhaps it had when they shared wine and danced, and she refused to allow herself to see it. “Sansa…” 

In the silence that followed, the hoots and shouts of the revelers in the halls beyond their chamber echoed through the stone. She glanced towards the door. “You know what they expect of you.” 

His breath came faster now. “My men expect me to march into King’s Landing and crush the Lannister army too, but this I cannot just _do._ It doesn’t matter what they think.” 

“Do you care for what I think, then? All my life I’ve had to thwart the untoward touches of men, and now I have to beg for yours, my husband’s?” She tried to keep her voice steady, even as frustration threatened. 

Jon’s fists clenched, and she heard Ghost growl outside the door, ever cognizant of his mood. 

“If I repulse you… you need only say so.” 

He crossed the room to pull her against his chest again. “No, of course not, how could I ever think that? You’re beautiful… more than I could ever have imagined or hoped for. More than I deserve.”

She recognized the Jon she knew when she left Winterfell then, a Jon wrought with insecurity over his name and position, who sat in the back at feasts and lived on the periphery of her everyday sphere, no matter now that he commanded great armies and gave orders to the lords of the North. Did he still see her the same way, as though she were the Sansa who obeyed every word of her mother and septa, who looked down upon Arya’s past times of swordsmanship and climbing and riding with disdain, who spent her days dreaming of her big, great destiny that waited somewhere out there, beyond the walls of Winterfell? 

She reached up and removed her crown, placing it on the table beside his dirk. “If you will, then at least lend me your hands for a few moments.”

The bedding had loosened and disarrayed most of the careful work her maids completed in the morning to prepare her for the ceremony and feast, but her corset was still too tight to slide off, and her hair still done up in pins. She sank down on the bed and waited until Jon sat beside her. 

“I know you were…” _Expecting to take a maidenhead tonight, but I have none to give anymore,_ did not seem the right approach. Instead she tried, “Not hoping for this.”

What had it mattered then? No one expected a baseborn, bastard girl to be a maid anyhow, and Petyr had told her to win Harry’s favor. And she had desired Harry, truly, strong, handsome, charming Harry, and it had seemed so easy, a momentary fairytale like all the ones she’d dreamt, at least one wish fulfilled where so many others had been lost. Until she’d given in and then he’d gone away, that had been, back to the mother of one of his bastards or another, disinterested once she had become another one of his conquests, an accomplishment to cheers ale over with the men who served him. 

Jon’s face twisted, concern furrowing his brow. “This is all I ever hoped, finding you again. Not like this, but…” 

She turned towards him and took his hands in hers, marveling at how much bigger they were. Though slighter than Robb, Jon had always been taller, stronger, than her, and years away of training and fighting had made him even more so, but she found herself especially aware of their differences now. 

“This is what I always hoped for, as a silly girl. Surely you remember that at least, my wish for a kind, handsome husband, someone who loved me. It’s what I always wanted, Jon. Even if I, too, could never have imagined this. But this… this is what I want now. A marriage that’s real and true.” She didn’t dare to look at him as she paused to draw breath. “I know you haven’t had much time to think on it, but I have. And I know life isn’t like in the songs anymore, that most of those knights I dreamt of are rotten on the inside, rapers and robbers. That most princes and kings aren’t what they seem, that they don’t want to serve the realm or care for the smallfolk. That all most men want are coin in their purses or warm cunts ‘round their cocks. But you aren’t like that. I know that. That’s why I agreed. That’s the truth.” 

When she glanced up, she saw the look of winter in his eyes, the icy glare of the kings who’d come before, the ones they grew up hearing tales and legends about, whose likenesses now stood below in the crypts of Winterfell—frozen, emotionless. 

And then it thawed. 

She waited while he dredged up the words he wanted to say. “Sansa, I… I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I’m your wife,” she urged. “You can tell me anything.” 

Jon’s handsome features darkened. “What if I were to… what if you… you grew up in the same Winterfell I did.” 

“Our child would not be a bastard.” 

She wondered if he’d fought this same war when he loved his wildling, or if it had been easy for him then, if it was only because it was her now. “And what about when they find out you’re you?” 

“What will they do?” she said. “How can they question? If anything they will be delighted, for a true Stark heir.”

Jon winced again. “And what of the madness of the Targaryens? Of Joffrey?” 

She smiled. “Do you take me for Cersei?” 

“No. Of course not.” 

She felt his eyes on her as she turned her back to him and gestured towards her hair. “Do you mind?” 

He went slowly, taking great pains to avoid tugging the strands as he slid each of the pins out and unwound her braids, allowing them to give way to soft waves. 

“Will this come out?” he asked, holding a strand of her dark, foreign hair between his fingers when she faced him again. 

“Eventually,” she said. 

He cleared his throat. “Good. I much prefer the red.” 

She smiled again. “Even though it matched my mother’s?” 

He paused. “She wouldn’t want us to do this, Sansa. Not for real.” 

“She’s dead, Jon. Her and Robb and Father, too. They aren’t coming back if you do this or if you don’t.” 

“I will not dishonor you,” he said, reddening. 

She gave a forced laugh. “The dishonor has been done.” 

Confusion crossed his handsome features, closely followed by anger, so she added, “By my own choosing.” 

He gave a terse nod.

“Do you worry for your honor?” 

He shook his head. “No, I fear I haven’t… remained chaste either. Sansa, I’m sorry.”

She stopped him, putting a hand to his chest. “There is nothing to be ashamed of.” When his brow did not unfurrow, she knew there was more. 

“You don’t understand. I was a man of the Night’s Watch. I took a vow—I couldn’t keep it. Who’s to say I can keep this one?” 

“That’s what you worry of? That you said some words to a tree once, to have no wife, father no children? Tell me, where in that vow did you promise to no longer be a man? To no longer think, or feel?” She didn’t wait for him to respond before continuing. “No, Jon, I am not upset in the least. You—you are more than I ever could have hoped for, too, truly.” 

He carded his hand through her hair again, checking for any missed pins, and she remembered when they were younger, when he would tell Robb off whenever he pulled her hair, or Arya, for teasing her about how much time it must have taken to brush the strands out. There was none of that now in Jon’s touch, only his gentle fingers on her scalp. 

She let herself sigh and sink into his massage until she brushed up against his chest. 

He huffed a breath against her cheek. “Tell me one thing true. If Petyr Baelish dared to lay a hand on—”

“No, he was not Littlefinger,” she shook her head, trying to stifle a shiver at the thought, although she found thinking of the way Petyr looked at her less frightening in Jon’s arms. “He’s not anyone for you to worry about. I only want you.” 

She stroked her hands along the inside of his arms. Even here she could feel him corded with muscle. 

“Using the claim our marriage was unconsummated is how they dissolved the marriage with Tyrion,” she said. “I was grateful for it then. I would not be so now.” 

“I would never force such a thing upon you,” he shuddered, the chill seeming to run through the length of his body despite the heat of his bare chest that warmed her back. “Nor would I permit such a dissolution of our union based on such impudent reasons.” 

“I know, Jon, I know,” she said soothingly. “But you know as well as I that to the rest of them, sometimes we alone are not enough.”

She twisted around and cupped his cheek, her eyes drawn to the scar that ran straight through his brow and skimmed over his left one, a mar that had not been there when she last saw him, when he rode off with Uncle Benjen out of Winterfell. “What happened to you?” 

“A bird attack,” he said, closing it to let her trace her finger over it. “Sort of, anyway.” 

She reached down to where his hand rested on the bedclothes between them, the skin mottled in some parts. It was an older injury than the one on his face, she could tell, nearly all the way faded, and he didn’t flinch as she examined his skin. “And here?” 

“An open flame encountered protecting the Lord Commander. Mormont, I mean.” He looked as though he wished to say more but thought better of it as her eyes continued to trace over him, drawn now to his collarbone and the faint scratches his shirt left exposed there. 

She swept the shirt off over his head to get a better look, ignoring his protest of her name, and she had to bite her lip to keep from gasping. Seven thick, angry scars scattered over his torso, marking his ribs, his chest, over his heart. 

“Oh, Jon,” she said, trying to guide her attention towards the defined muscles of his abdomen instead of letting her eyes lock on the evidence of what Jon had suffered. 

“It was a long time ago now,” he said hollowly, as if that made it any better. 

The traumas she endured were not visible like his, the bruises courtesy of Joffrey and Meryn Trant, the scrapes and scratches from the day they’d been attacked in King’s Landing, all long since faded, and then there were those that could not be seen to begin with. 

“It’s not that I don’t want, but…” he looked away, staring into the dancing flames of the candles on the nightstand. “It’s been a long time, too, since I’ve been with a woman. I don’t wish to hurt you.” 

“You won’t,” she promised, running her hands down his arms again. “I may have lain with a man before, but it’s never been… nice.” She repelled the shudder that threatened to wind through her at the memory of her night with Harry, his none-so-gentle thrusts and his lack of attentions on her part. “With you… it would be nice.” Jon was nothing if not considerate. 

His face twisted again. “It would be…” 

“A sin?” she said. “An affront to the gods? An abomination? Tell me, have we not committed all those and more already?” 

Jon wore a look she could not read, and she thought perhaps she had been wrong before. Maybe she did not know the man she married as well as she thought; maybe she never knew him at all. 

“It is not those things,” she braved to say. “Those things are being stripped and beaten by your betrothed, being forced to marry the enemy against your will, being trapped in a place by a man you barely know who has his own best interests at heart.” Tears threatened in her eyes, but if Jon noticed, he did not act. “I am not your blood. Not anymore. And if it is a mortal sin, if it is a grievous offense… what else can be done to us that we have not already suffered?” 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, his curls falling across his face. She wondered what he thought of, if it was the Winterfell they inhabited as children, the long path he traveled only to end up here, or her, and what she meant to him now. 

“We are not who we were,” she whispered. 

“No,” he agreed, “We are not.” 

“They are all gone,” she said. It did not matter to which ‘they’ she referred—none of them, dead or alive, were with them behind these walls now. “And we have to answer to no one.” 

He started slow, threading his fingers through hers. She enjoyed Jon’s touch at the feast, but it felt different here now that they sat abed alone—intimate, suddenly more carnal than familial. 

“I worried you wouldn’t recognize me,” she confessed. 

“I may be slow-witted, but not quite that slow,” he said, a grin playing again around his lips. She wondered why she never noticed how nice they were before, how she had never registered how handsome Jon looked when he smiled. What else may she have missed or have forgotten since their time in Winterfell? 

“Though there was a moment when I didn’t,” he admitted. 

She returned his grin. “And what did you think then?” 

“That the tales were true. That you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life,” he said. “That perhaps this wouldn’t be what I dreaded.” His voice dropped low. “That I would have no problem making love to you tonight.” 

They were words the Sansa he had known so long ago would have wanted to hear from her handsome husband on her wedding night. That Sansa would have been thrilled, excited by the prospect of leaving Winterfell to live with a stranger in a faraway place. That Sansa had also dreamed of life as if it were a song. _And what a song this would make…_

She knew Jon married her for the Vale, or maybe, because of his past, he saw her as a fellow bastard and meant to raise her up the same as his people did for him. 

But when she looked at him, she saw nothing of the sort in his eyes, only a flash of desire, the way a man ought to look at his wife, before he steadied his gaze. _If this is truly wrong, then why do the gods let it feel so right?_

She reached behind herself and pulled on the bow of the ribbon that held her corset together. “Show me.” 

And then Jon was kissing her, for real this time, no chaste pecks anymore like in the sept, his mouth hot but soft. He tasted of wine and something sweet from the rounds of dessert, and she wondered if he could detect the sour notes on her tongue from the lemon cakes she consumed. But if he did, he didn’t seem to mind, pulling her atop him and devouring her like a man starved. 

The Sansa of her younger years held such naïve notions of her wedding night: that it would be slow and sweet, with each of them taking the time to finish undressing each other, talking and getting to know one another before they fell into bed, and then they would make something together that would be worth the pain her septa warned her would come, a little Eddard or Brandon. _Silly girl,_ Sansa thought, _stupid girl,_ as she pulled the laces dangling from Jon’s breeches away and tossed them to the floor. 

Jon tore away her corset with equal vigor, discarding the material in favor of cupping her breasts with his hands. She felt no embarrassment, no shame, as she directed Jon’s hand lower, down between her legs, beneath her smallclothes, guiding him until he found that sweet, sweet spot and stroked his finger over it until she writhed and panted beneath him. She couldn’t bring herself to feel any kind of hesitation or humiliation when Jon covered her free hand with his own and slid it down the expanse of skin beneath the remnants of his wounds, following the line of hair that descended out of sight, nor when she felt bold enough to wrap her hand around his cock or the thrill she experienced when he further hardened against her palm, pride filling her instead when he groaned and closed his eyes. 

“Is this all right?” she asked. When he only panted in response, she added, to evade using his too-familiar name, “Your Grace?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice little more than a deep growl. He slid his hands lower, bracketing her hips so he could grind his upward against hers. “My Grace.” 

Part of her wondered if he rushed to complete the act as soon as possible out of a sense of aversion, but she redirected her mind to the other part, the part that whispered that perhaps judging by Jon’s ardently insistent hands and the attention his lips now paid to her throat and then the hard peaks of her breasts, he wanted this just as much, maybe even more than her. 

He rolled so she laid now against the pillows, spread out beneath him. Jon barely took a second to reposition himself between her legs before he dove for her mouth again. 

Sansa had given up everything she dreamt about her wedding night long ago, even before Petyr, before she left King’s Landing. She learned to expect the worst, and for once in her life, she found herself pleasantly surprised. Jon’s kisses were deep and reciprocal, nothing like the selfish taking of Harry’s; he didn’t force her mouth open with his tongue, nor push her head downward in the direction of his manhood. Instead he treated her with a sense of passionate reverence, letting his hands follow the curves of her body as she arched into his touch and allowing her to direct his ministrations where she saw fit. The praises Jon whispered contained no hint of a leer or disrespect, rather he sighed of her beauty and how good she felt beneath him and how he could scarcely wait to be inside of her. 

_Wrong,_ she knew she should have thought when Jon reached down and tore away her smallclothes. _Unnatural,_ she knew she should have pulled away when he fit his hand between her legs, sliding a finger and then two into her wetness. _Depraved,_ she knew she should have been sickened, revolted, disgusted, when he set himself at her entrance and pushed inside. But it felt so unlike any of those things, and instead so good, so right, she could not. 

For all his earlier haste, Jon now entered her slowly. In spite of how deeply she thought she desired Harry, she acutely recalled the sharp pain that had come at this part with him. He’d reassured her hurrying on with it, like ripping off a bandage, was the best way to go about it; she should have recognized by then that Harry knew very little about very much. 

No such discomfort troubled her now with Jon, the feeling merely a pleasurable stretch as he slid further until he filled her entirely, his hand never leaving that exquisite spot between them. Maybe that was the difference, she didn’t know, or perhaps Harry had bedded a great number too many to care to learn the nuances of each, or possibly could this be as right as it felt… 

Tyrion told her long ago on their wedding night to picture him as the Knight of Flowers, and she had latched onto such with both relief at his understanding and forlorn heartache over the loss of every last childish reverie she’d retained. She had no need for such diversions with Jon, him far from unsightly, his hair as dark as hers, his eyes more black than grey now, the marks on his body suddenly seeming appealing rather than abhorrent, symbols of his will to live, his strength and courage, his vitality and virility. 

Sansa didn’t dare think what ribaldry laid beyond the doors, what the revelers engaged in while they waited for what? Her moans, Jon’s shouts? She wasn’t going to give them the gratification while they listened for hers. 

Instead she muffled her teeth against Jon’s shoulder, hoping she didn’t add to the marks on his body, but at least those, this time, would be borne out of pleasure rather than suffering. 

Jon acted as though she were made with the fragility of glass, her skin spun from the finest silk while he continued to gently push into her, his hands roaming with a sense of worshipful affection. Or at least he managed to maintain such dutiful tenderness until she clenched around him and his cock jumped in automatic response, earning herself another growl. Sansa giggled, until he thrust deeper and her giggles turned to gasps, his grin to a groan… 

And then Jon asked if she wanted to sit astride him, and she felt herself blush for the first time as she clambered over him and reduced him to near shouts with nothing more than sinking down on his length. He matched her rhythm, the muscles in his arms and chest becoming more well-defined now with his exertion, though whether he truly struggled to wrap his hands around her hipbones and grasp her breasts or rather to contain himself, she could not be sure. 

“Come for me, sweet girl,” he rasped. 

“I can’t,” she panted, even though she really meant she simply did not know how. All she’d learned on the topic stemmed from Myranda Royce, her minimal experiences with Harry doing nothing to add to that secondhand knowledge. “I— _oh._ ” 

Then Jon bucked his hips upward, the angle allowing him to rub against something there she hadn’t even known existed, something almost as divine as the perfect place between her legs to which he now also returned his attentions. 

She all of a sudden found that instead of an impossibility it would be an inevitability, that she couldn’t stop then, not when that feeling was _right there,_ and all she had to do was grind down on him to reach it. Sansa let herself, not caring how she looked with her hands tugging at her own hair, how the sounds she made that probably more closely resembled the snorts and wheezes of the swine outside instead of the lady wife of a king.

It at last struck her more forcefully than she anticipated, stretched out into seconds and seconds of pure, absolute bliss, and when she came to again, she found herself still begging Jon for more, the words, “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” falling from her lips as the reverberations wound through her body. 

She felt the heat of his spill minutes, a moment, some innumerable measure of time later, his lips finding their way against hers again, the rise and fall of his chest meeting hers with the hammer of his heart to match. Recognition of their surroundings slowly returned as her mind cleared, the candles’ wicks burning low now, the hallway beyond quieter, the rustle of the sheets as they turned and Jon pulled her flush against him almost harsh and cold on her skin compared to the gentle strokes of his hands over her belly and the warmth of his expanse behind her. 

“Sansa,” he whispered, after they laid beside each other for a while in the darkness, and once she could no longer tell whether he was awake or asleep. 

Jon did not tell her he loved her, but there was no need. She already knew, in the way he encouraged her with his kind words and praises, how he held her close and looked at her with more than just desire, more than mere sympathy, his adoration evident in every touch of their lips. Maybe it had always been there, behind his few words, his brooding nature, his sense of honor and dedication to a family he wanted nothing more than to be a part of. 

Maybe, somewhere, somehow, she always knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So initially I only planned on following the story to this point, but I, too, am intrigued by the possibilities of Sansa returning North as Alayne. What do you all think? Where do they go from here?


	4. Chapter 4

“Not much farther now,” Jon promised her. 

She should have known the way as well as Jon, how close they were, but everything looked different now blanketed in a layer of snow than it had in her childhood. The last time she’d seen these grounds had been at the end of the long summer when she’d gone south to King’s Landing with their father and Arya, the king and all of his men. Then the trees still bore their leaves instead of bare branches, the sun shone more often than not in the sky, and it had been easy to cover miles and miles a day over the rich green grass and unobstructed road. 

Of course, Alayne would have no such knowledge, so it mattered little that she now recognized naught. 

A chill ran down the length of her spine, and Sansa found herself grateful for the warmth of her horse and the diversion of walking on as she mounted up. They needed to leave early if they hoped to reach their destination by evenfall with the nights growing longer and the days shorter the farther North they went. 

This day, their last on the road, she hoped, dawned as dark and cold as any other since their retinue had made its way into the North. The fair weather they enjoyed for weeks prior and on the day of their wedding had been enough to melt the snows for their passage to return, but the skies turned grey and the winds bitter again as soon as they departed the Gates of the Moon. 

It had been slow going along the stony, treacherous high road out of the Vale until they reached the Riverlands and the kingsroad, not that the conditions there were much improved, the path narrowing and turned to mud where it had not frozen. Things only worsened again once they passed through the swampy, half-frozen Neck and the ruins of Moat Cailin and emerged into the true North. 

Every once in a while they found opportunities to stay at an inn beside the kingsroad for a feather bed, a warm bath, and a hot meal, but most nights they instead pitched tents in the hard ground, with nothing more than open fires and furs to defend themselves against the frost. Even though by now Sansa had grown used to the long days of travel and the challenges that came with it, living on the road came with an unrelenting weariness and sense of monotonousness she did not enjoy. She longed for the hot springs of Winterfell, a chance to brush her hair without it snagging in the wind moments later, an opportunity to have more than mere moments alone to herself. 

Some of the men urged Jon to stop in the larger keeps and holdfasts along the way to pay respect to the lords and ladies of the houses and vassals there and grace them with his presence, but Jon always declined. 

“Winter is here,” he said. “We must be on our way.” 

Sansa knew he like as not did not avoid such visits for her sake, but she felt grateful all the same, on the off chance the men who survived fighting for Robb or had stayed home whilst the realms went to war would recognize some part of her. She did not intend to stay Alayne forever, but in these times, she wore her dark hair and easy smile like armor. 

They were joined by more of Jon’s men once they reached the lands of the North: namely the bearded, bawdy commander Tormund Giantsbane and his host of wildlings that had not been welcome further south. Jon seemed much more at ease here on the road with his men rather than sitting up in a castle, even laughing and joking on occasion, something Sansa always enjoyed to see. 

Despite the trust he had in them to guard the North in his absence, she noticed Jon’s reluctance to let her out of his sight. She could feel the wary grey eyes he turned on his men when they chuckled and jested with Alayne, she took note of the way he flexed his burned hand when they teased that perhaps they should have scooped her up when she was still a bastard and not yet a queen, and she caught what appeared to be a grimace on his part when the wildlings told her how lucky they were to be traveling with such beauty, even if she wasn’t “kissed by fire” like Jon’s Ygritte had been. 

She found it easier than she anticipated to remain Alayne as they neared Winterfell, especially with these men she never before met. Years of practice led her to be able to talk of the Vale and her father, of her journey from a baseborn bastard to the daughter of a Lord Protector and now to a queen without so much a second thought, but it was the moments she shared with Jon that perplexed her the most. How did she used to act around him, she struggled to recall—with casual indifference, a sense of haughty disregard, or maybe even derision? 

None of those would serve any longer, not that they should have in the first place. Sometimes she found herself flushing with embarrassment when she thought on the transgressions of her youth, wishing vehemently that she could take them back, replaying moments in her mind from a decade ago, from when she’d shouted at Jon that he couldn’t be the Lord of Winterfell in their game that day, that the role had to be played by Robb, her steadfast ignoring of him and refusal to look his way when they sat down to sup, all the times she’d referred to him as her half-brother or bastard brother. 

To her comfort, it appeared Jon sometimes struggled with such changes, too, seeing the prissy girl who’d turned up her nose at the idea of riding horseback rather than the one who found it a welcome and refreshing distraction. 

“Would you prefer to ride in one of the wagons, or along with me?” he asked the morning they prepared to leave the Vale. 

“I’m a capable lady,” she said, hoping he knew she meant to say, _I am not the naïve, incompetent child I used to be._ In truth, she did not wish to take up space meant for supplies to bring back North, and she did not want to face the feelings that threatened to stir up at the mere thought of riding astride with Jon. Instead she rode beside him on her own mount, a pretty chestnut that would have matched the true hair of Sansa Stark, and she told him stories of riding the mules up and down to the Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon, and how the challenges of the high road were naught compared to that. 

As it grew colder the further they worked their way North, Sansa was glad Alayne had never been north of White Harbor and that the Vale never grew this cold, for she could no longer control her shivers as snow began to cover the grounds and her breath turned to frost in the air. Her shivers would have been a shame for the daughter of Eddard Stark, a daughter of Winterfell, now thawed, weakened by so many years in the South. 

After nearly a sennight of such chills, Jon finally took notice. He apologized for his thoughtlessness, and the next day, he rustled up a long, cloak of black bearskin for her to wrap around herself as the road ahead grew bleaker. 

To his credit, he had asked her to share a tent with him from the start—not out of any husbandly duty, she suspected, but rather out of a sense of brotherly protectiveness and royal obligation. He laid a sensible distance away from her, sometimes with Ghost between them to keep warm on the nights he did not stay out to hunt. Jon’s wolf-topped sword rested at the ready on his other side, and he made no attempts to slide beneath her furs. 

They would whisper at night until she drifted off to sleep, but no more than that. She began with Joffrey’s wedding and her escape from King’s Landing, telling Jon as much as she dared about Petyr’s wedding to the Lady Lysa and her fall, Sweetrobin and his sweetmilk and what came after, Petyr’s quest to unite the North and the Vale and his plot to land Harry the Heir, even if she did leave out a few details about her role in that scheme. 

He told her of how he dreamt of Robb, of the crypts below Winterfell, how he feared all of them, even her, were perhaps there already. He talked of returning to Winterfell, how Stannis’s forces clashed first with the Boltons outside the walls and deep in the snow, and then how Jon’s northmen and free folk alike struck once the victorious Boltons began to retreat and lick their wounds. He recounted how the men of the North declared him king according to Robb’s will once the Boltons were exterminated for their treason. He described the things he’d seen beyond the Wall, the wildlings all united together, the giants, the mammoths they rode, and far worse, dead men come alive, and the beings that reanimated them, their eyes ice blue, their bodies nearly skeletal, the way the winds turned frozen when they appeared in the darkness... 

Then there were the things between them that went unsaid— his death and resurrection, Joffrey’s abuses and his so-called mercy for their Father, what each thought had become of Arya, where the bones of Robb and Bran and Rickon may lie. 

There during her nights she received a reprieve from Alayne, a few precious moments to slip back to Sansa, a reminder of who she’d been before a princess-in-waiting, a ward of the crown, an unwilling wife, a fugitive, another man’s daughter. With each passing night, she found more and more of herself returning: how she would hum as she sewed during their stops to rest, the way words of poetry seemed to form again in her mind as they crossed beautiful landscapes, the delight with which she listened to the tales the free folk told around the campfire. Slipping back to Sansa seemed different this time: she felt stronger, fiercer, as though she drew her power from the old lands of the North. 

There were other matters to worry of, however, as they continued north. Foraging for food along the kingsroad became increasingly difficult, and all were reluctant to breach the stores they brought from the Vale. The scarcity of wood for their fires, the lack of wildlife in the woods, the emptiness of the villages they passed; she knew all this and more concerned Jon. 

Sansa worried for him, and she knew she counted among his worries, too. With sharing such close quarters, there had been no way to conceal the arrival of her moonblood soon after they had crossed over the Riverlands and into the North, and Jon had asked often after her comfort. Handling that in itself had been no worrisome issue, but it troubled her more how Jon had yet to mention anything else. Did he feel as though the duty had been done, their marriage consummated enough to satisfy her? Even if so, did he realize they still required an heir, with the rest of their family gone? Would he ask if they should try again? 

She chastised herself for experiencing the surprising pang of resulting disappointment and for even considering the possibility that his seed would quicken after only one instance. Had she really hoped for such? What an awful place, on the road and in the ruins of Winterfell, and what an awful time, during the midst of winter, to be with child and welcome a babe to the world. 

And Jon, it seemed, for all his chivalry and willingness to share whispers, could hardly bear to look at her that way anyhow now that they had started their return north, with his separate furs and protective sword and constant companion. 

She supposed it was well enough; she freely admitted they had more pressing concerns to contend with, and with the woods quiet at night and their men close by, it left little room or time for privacy. She did not wish for them to hear the sounds she was certain she made the night of their bedding, sounds she didn’t think she could suppress were her and Jon to couple again. 

Sansa thought of the night often though, and whenever Jon placed his hand upon the small of her back to help her mount her horse, when he licked his chapped lips in the winter air, when she caught a glimpse of him changing his tunic and breeches in their tent, things twisted up inside her. While she had wanted Harry and had gotten him in a way, she had never thought it could feel like this, the way it was with Jon, so satisfying, invigorating, entirely pleasant and completely devoid of fear or deception. 

Was this what her time as a bastard had taught her? Had she truly slipped from a highborn lady of two noble, ancient houses into the habits of depravity in a few short years? She wondered on occasion if this was another cruel trick, perhaps on the part of the gods, to punish Jon for cheating death and her for years of deceit and duplicity, to make her desire him so. 

After hours of barren landscapes, they at last emerged on the crest of a hill overlooking the stone walls. She’d imagined it so many times, thinking she would never see it again, that now it did not even seem real. Her eyes locked on each part in turn: the broken tower, the stout round drum, the bell tower, the remnants of the bridge to the armory, the red leaves of the weirwood in the godswood. Their high points jutted upward into the sky, the colors of smoke and burnt wood and blood stark against the pale grey clouds. At the foot of the walls laid Wintertown, more full of crude dwellings constructed of logs and motley stones amidst the piles of snow than Sansa had ever seen it in her childhood, during the years of the long summer. 

Jon rode up beside her. “Winterfell, my lady,” he said quietly. “Our home.” 

Tears sprang to her eyes. Was it still, or was it now? Could it still be when none of the people were familiar anymore, and the Starks themselves all but extinguished? Would it still feel like one when so much of it had been destroyed, desecrated by their enemies? 

Jon left her to her thoughts, urging his horse onward and leading their retinue down into the valley, towards the gate in the solid stone. 

Tormund Giantsbane came up on her other side. “I spent near on me whole life trying to keep the Starks and their men back behind those bloody walls. He’s the last o’ them, you know.”

She liked Tormund—well, she supposed Alayne did, Alayne who laughed at his ribald jokes and listened with rapt attention to his stories of living beyond the Wall and wrestling with bears and all sorts of madness, but Sansa truly did too, and she knew Jon trusted him. 

She knew there were a few who they could perhaps trust with their secret, trust with the knowledge that Sansa lived, but even if she decided Tormund was one of them, even if he believed her, even if he swore to never tell a soul and indeed never did, she still didn’t know if she could bring herself to say the words: _No,_ we’re _the last of them._


	5. Chapter 5

Sansa had always loved the excitement of singing and dancing at feasts, while Alayne enjoyed them for the company they brought and the opportunities they opened, but whoever she was now, the queen, she supposed, had tired of this one several hours ago. 

She would have retired to her chambers, but Sansa, Alayne, and the queen all knew it was poor form for the guest of honor to depart her own feast so early in the night. Besides, the lords and ladies of the northern houses who had been unable to make the journey south to the Vale to see her wed to Jon had traveled through hell, high water, and more to make it to Winterfell to attend the celebration intended to install her as truly the lady of the castle and bestow upon her the crown of the Queen in the North in more than just name alone. 

Under other circumstances, such an event would have been tolerable, enjoyable, even. The absence of so many familiar colors and sigils still struck her, and she found the dearth of men in the hall even more noticeable. Far more ladies were present tonight in the Great Hall of Winterfell than she was accustomed to seeing before the war, their sons and husbands now gone. Those that remained were almost all old men, young boys, or showed the hazards of war upon their persons, and almost none in attendance a young Sansa would have taken an interest in as potential suitors had her father still been alive, had this been a harvest feast like any other. 

Instead she let her eyes flit over those she did recognize: Jonelle Cerwyn, now the lady of her lands after her father and brother perished, Eddara Tallhart, whose story read much the same, Lady Lyessa Flint, and young Lyanna Mormont, named for her father’s sister, who was already as tough and strong at the age of ten as the bear of her house and the wolf of her namesake. There were still others whose names she did not know, whose allegiances she only suspected: one of the granddaughters of Lord Manderly in the long teal dress, a group of tall girls who must have hailed from some offshoot of House Umber, and several in plainer dress and furs she hazarded trekked all the way down from the mountain clans. 

In any case, the women from anywhere and everywhere, it seemed, all wished to have their turn to share a dance with the king. She watched with amusement as Jon switched out partners song after song, beginning to wonder if it had not been his will to learn to dance as he had claimed at their wedding feast, but rather that he had learned through the sheer routine of forced practice. 

It was well enough that Jon was otherwise occupied, though. Upon their arrival in Winterfell several weeks ago, Jon had accompanied her to the lady’s chambers that once belonged to her mother. He proceeded to offer a muttered apology for the sparseness of the room, took a quick glance at the bed that turned him red in the face, and bid a fast farewell. 

She had not thought much of it then, with the distractions of returning to Winterfell and the seemingly insurmountable number of tasks to perform around the keep, but his distance wore at her as the days went on. Jon kept his own chambers, the ones he had lived in beside Robb’s so long ago, evidently preferring to leave the lord’s, where their father had lived, vacant. That was how things were meant to be, she supposed, not that that was of a comfort to her when she spent the cold nights by herself in front of a dying fire or wished that, despite all the comforts of the living in a permanent settlement, her and Jon might at least share some of the whispers they had in the closeness of their tent pitched along the kingsroad. 

Jon had other matters to attend to, she knew. Certainly, his days were already filled with time spent training his men and himself in the yard, meeting with the representatives from the great and small houses of the North, and dealing with the smallfolk and wildlings surrounding Winterfell. She recognized he needed time after his demanding days to remain solitary and rest. She acknowledged, too, that it might raise suspicions for the King in the North to already be so close with his queen as to share her chambers. Out of necessity amidst their travels was one matter, and this another entirely. And how would it look when she was Sansa again? 

Still, she could not help but wonder if now that they had returned to Winterfell, he saw her once again as the Sansa she had been, a little girl in love with tales and songs, who dreamt of knights and valor and lacked the good sense and wisdom needed to run a kingdom. Worse yet, she questioned if he returned to seeing her as a sister, and one who dissociated from him as much as possible at that. That child, that part of Sansa, whether she wore the veneer of Alayne or not, she liked to think had gone for good. 

Sansa smiled as Jon now offered a turn to a girl who must have been as young as Bran and Rickon the last time she’d seen them, and once they began to reel the steps in time with the music, she reached across the table for another lemon cake. Upon their departure from the Vale, Jon had requested nearly the entire store of lemons as a dowry for his new bride from Petyr, who had no choice but to relinquish his supply with a forced smile plastered on his face. 

To tell the truth, she missed little and less from the Vale. Despite Winterfell growing colder with each night, she remembered the frigidity of the Eyrie, how frosted her chambers had become without any hot springs running through their walls when winter arrived, how they felt as chilled as the crypts of the Kings of Winter, how they felt like death. Her rooms here though, which had paid witness to so much death and destruction, still felt nothing of the sort, their warmth sinking into her bones, infusing her with the strength of their solid stone able to survive any trials, reviving her from what seemed like a long winter slumber. 

She did not pine for the silence either, nor the echoes of the nearly vacant hallways. The absence of sound had seemed oppressive in its own way, a constant reminder of desolation and emptiness. Even with the muting the snows provided, Winterfell maintained a constant hum of activity: the hammering of nails and the clunks of stones as the various towers were restored, the metallic crossing of swords and shouts of men in the training yard, the clatters and clangs of food being prepared in the kitchens. Here the wolves seemed to howl louder now beyond the walls in the silence of the night, yet Sansa found their cries, their presence, oddly comforting. Whether they had multiplied in number or she had merely never noticed before, her attention diverted with Winterfell’s full household, the laughter of her siblings, her gossiping with Jeyne Poole, she could not say. 

She yearned for the company of Littlefinger least of all. At least amongst all the challenges they faced in Winterfell, playing the game of thrones was not one of them. Overseeing renovations, remembering the names of all the new stablehands, retainers, and handmaids, and inventorying their stores she could contend with; providing dutiful kisses, enduring frequent reminders of how much she resembled her mother, and requiring her constant attention to filter out lies and the truth were more difficult matters. 

That was not to say that she had forgotten the lessons Petyr taught her, though. She had known from the start she must be more cautious than ever tonight. She may have never met the majority of their guests tonight or have been introduced to them only as a small girl, but they certainly knew of the existence of Sansa Stark, even if not her whereabouts. And while she did not doubt that they would rejoice upon learning the daughter of Eddard Stark, a trueborn heir to the North, lived, she could not risk that now, nor did she want think of what that might mean for Jon either. 

It was a strange feeling to wake up each morning in the one place where she truly belonged but no one expected her to, the folk of Winterfell seeing a girl unversed in the ways of the North, unfamiliar with life as a queen in a bustling castle instead. She found it odd to adjust to her handmaids offering her help in finding her way through the winding halls of the keep or guards asking if she wanted them to accompany her on her walks around the grounds. She became accustomed to feigning ignorance when they showed her the quickest routes to the kitchens or the store closets and pleasant surprise when they told her of the hot pools or the glass gardens. She found herself often providing reasons for how she happened to already know her way when they offered her directions or explanations, which were often accepted with a polite nod and smile, even if they sounded ridiculous to her ears. 

The need for such falsehoods, however, had lessened with each passing day. With Jon preoccupied, she took the time to become reacquainted with Winterfell, even exploring beyond the walls into the wildling camps and Wintertown. 

She found herself often as much of a curiosity to the people she visited and those in Winterfell as they to her. They asked her of the Vale and the Eyrie, of Lord Robert and the state of the Riverlands, about her father, Lord Baelish, and what she knew of her mother. She answered their questions good-naturedly, remembering her own interest piqued when Cersei and the Baratheons arrived in Winterfell so long ago and her misguided reverence of the queen in King’s Landing. 

Jon caught her eye from the dance floor, where he lingered for a moment before Lyanna Mormont returned for another dance. He quickly looked away, offering the young girl a smile he seemed not to have had for Sansa earlier. 

Preparing for the feast had taken her most of the afternoon. She’d tried on dress after dress from the chest she brought with from the Vale, some gifts from Petyr over the years, others given as wedding presents by those who hoped to impress. In any case, most of them had been far too ostentatious for her to wear there as a bastard or would have made utterly impractical garb for traveling along the kingsroad, but she was a queen now. If there ever was a time to costume herself as she always had dreamed as a girl, the day had come. 

So for the occasion, she selected one woven of blue velvet and satin the color of winter roses, the skirt flowing downward from where it sat tight around her hips. 

“A—are you not cold, my lady?” Jon stammered when she took her seat beside him on the dais in the Great Hall. His eyes ran over the open neckline, her exposed collarbone, criss-cross ties of blue silk drawn tight over her breasts. 

“No, not at all,” she said lightly. It was true; with the hall packed tonight, she felt warmer than she had since the night of their wedding that she’d spent in Jon’s embrace. She’d reached across the table for the flagon of wine, not thinking much of the action until she felt Jon’s eyes on her, taking in the waves of her hair done up in elegant curls, following the curve of her bared neck, and ending up on her chest, where her dress slipped lower as her arm extended. 

When she asked Jon if he wanted any, his flush deepened. He murmured an assent, and proceeded to spend the majority of the following meal deep in conversation with Larence Hornwood, formerly a Snow and now the heir to his father’s household, who sat to his right. 

At least Jon had possessed the decency to ask her for a dance to begin the evening, but she demurred in favor of the ladies already approaching Jon. She suspected he would prefer that anyway, favoring the task of carrying on his duties of furthering the Northern cause and winning over their support rather than engaging in frivolous pursuits such as romance. 

Sansa accepted offers from a few of the men out of politeness, but excused herself back to the dais and her wine and lemon cakes before long. Though kind and complimentary, none of them had held her quite like Jon, even those who knew the steps as well as she did. Instead she sat back and tried to enjoy this role reversal of watching Jon obliged to play gracious host in between the greeting the guests who approached her and engaging in conversation with those who took a seat beside her. 

“You’ve done well for yourself, eh? From a bastard born to a no-name mother and a low-born father all the way to Lady of Winterfell and wedding the King in the North? I commend you,” said one of Lord Ryswell’s sons, Roger or Rickard or Roose, who took his turn in the chair. She couldn’t keep any of them straight, nor their array of multicolored horse sigils. Sansa had not forgotten they were one of the first to turn to the Boltons, and one of the last to swear back allegiance to the Starks. “Truly your father’s daughter.” 

_Indeed I am,_ she thought, thinking of Lord Eddard’s tact and honor and swallowing a sip of wine to wipe away her bitter smile. _Hence why I won’t have you removed from this hall at this very moment._

He laid a hand on her arm, and she could think of nothing but how that hand had helped feed and defend the Boltons in her home, how he very well may have used it to take up arms against Jon, how it would have shaken those that murdered her brother and mother.

“Excuse me,” she said, standing. Alayne had been forced to accept such insolence with a smile; whoever she had become now within the walls of Winterfell did no longer held such obligations. “I think I will repair back to my chambers for the evening.” 

At the moment she wanted nothing more than to be alone, surrounded by the warmth and familiarity of the very same walls that had comforted her as a girl, where she had sought her mother in times of distress, or perhaps she wished only to be alone with—

“Sa—Your Grace.” Jon appeared beside her, his hand on her arm, his eyebrows raised in question. “Are you all right?” 

“I apologize, my king,” she said. Behind Jon, the dance partner he’d abruptly abandoned with a quick bow stood open-mouthed. “I fear I am still weary from the trip north.” 

“Make no excuses,” he said, his voice calm and laced with the authority his crown and title brought. “Allow me to walk you to your chambers?” 

She agreed, not thinking it sensible to decline or lecture Jon on the proper manners of a courteous host in front of most of the North. 

The walk from the Great Hall to her chambers seemed longer than it ever had, even when she’d been a child and likely had to take twice as many steps to reach the keep as she did now, stretched out by the silence between them. By the time they reached the door, the trip felt as though it nearly equaled their journey from the Vale. 

Jon released her arm with a perfunctory nod. “Here you are, my lady.” 

“Perhaps you wish to join me?” she asked. She knew what the response would be; she just wished to see what reason he would give this time. 

He cleared his throat. “No—not tonight.” 

She watched him start off down the hall. She had tried, at least. She knew what Alayne would have done, how Alayne would have found a way. But it felt wrong to use those tricks, those deceptions here in her home, here with Jon. She opened her door a fraction, and then closed it again. 

“Jon?” she called after him. 

He turned. 

“Is this the way things are to be between us?” 

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve barely spared a glance my way since we rode through these walls.” 

“Sans—” She cut him off with a harsh gesture. “That’s not true. I’ve... been occupied. There are many matters which require my attention.” 

She came closer to him. “And am I another one of these vexing ‘matters’ of which you speak?” 

He cringed. “Of course not.”

Even in the dim light, she could see how tired he was, how ragged running a kingdom had worn him. She was tired too, though, tired of this gulf between them that should not exist, no matter what they were to each other now. “Have you forgotten the night of our wedding?” 

“Forgotten?” he said the word as if it were foreign. 

“Yes. Forgotten.” 

He closed his eyes and then snapped them open again. “Do you truly think I could have forgotten? It is near on all I think about.” 

Sansa blinked at his words, her breath hitching. _All?_ The word stuck in her mind, much as the images of Jon undressed, above her, touching her had for weeks on end. She could feel her face redden; she felt grateful for the torches lining the hall that provided a rosy glow regardless. 

Jon seemed not to notice, continuing on, his voice deepening even as it teetered with strife. This was not the voice of a man who had been angered nor a man who did not care, but rather the voice of a man offering up a confession. “Aye, I have tried to avoid thinking on it. I have made my best efforts to erode away the memory in the training yard, riding in the wolfswood, wasting nights lying awake. I have prayed to gods I know do not exist. 

“I did not come to you because I did not want to frighten you with my infatuation. I did not sleep in your chambers because I did not wish to entice you into entering something you did not desire. I did not ask you to accompany me on my walks because I did not think I could resist taking you under the heart tree, gods be damned.”

Sansa would have been satisfied with any single one of Jon’s explanations. She had not girded herself for this deluge, this torrent of admittances in the midst of a drought. Despite what she had told Jon earlier about her dress, she felt warmer at that moment than she had all morning and night, even when she’d woken beneath her pile of furs, even as she spent the afternoon soaking in her bathtub to prepare for the feast, even amongst the hundreds of bodies gathered together under the roof of the Great Hall. The heat slinked down her body and settled between her legs. 

“How do you think I’ve felt,” he continued. “Having these—these unrelenting predilections for my—my—”

“Wife,” she stated. There would be no doubting that, at least not out here in these halls. 

She could hear his rough breaths, see his chest rise and fall with each shuddering inhale and exhale. 

“That’s what I am, Jon. There’s no need to deny it.”

He swiped a hand over his face as if he were attempting to scrub away his shame. “There is when I’ve spent weeks feeling like a fucking sick—”

“Bastard?” she supplied. “I know what you mean.” 

He looked at her in disbelief. “How could you? You’re not… you’re _you._ ”

She gave an empty laugh. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Jon.” 

“I do,” he said, approaching her like a wolf poised with its prey in sights. “I know you’re exceedingly clever. You must have been, to survive Littlefinger. I know what you’ve done for the smallfolk and the wildlings since you’ve been home. You put thought into the things few others are concerned with. I know that just looking at you, seeing you watch me train in the yard, makes my blood hotter than any fire could. I know you are, without a doubt, darkened hair or not, the most—”

She cut him off with her lips on his before he could go on, before he could do something so asinine as to wish her hair red again or utter her name as it threatened to bubble up his throat. Jon licked into her mouth; this time he tasted faintly of the strong northern ale, but the way his tongue slid against hers made the bitterness seem so sweet. 

_Torture,_ he called the long nights they’d spent together on the road northward, lying beside her as she slept, unable to touch or hold her or even take himself in hand. _Madness,_ he called the weeks he spent trying to resist her while his open mouth slipped down her throat. _Heaven,_ he called the feeling of her arching beneath his touch as he kneaded her breasts. 

By the time Sansa paused to catch her breath, Jon had worked a hand up beneath her skirts. 

“Do you know the thoughts that have plagued me ever since that night?” he asked, fingers skimming over her silk-and-lace smallclothes. 

“N—no,” she said, melting backward against the door to her chambers under the intensity of his gaze. 

“What you taste like… how you feel so hot and tight around me… the way it would sound for you to say my name when you peak…” He punctuated each of his fervent wishes with a turn of his wrist against the heat between her legs. 

She began to say she’d imagine she tasted of wine and lemon cakes, the dessert she’d consumed too much of while he danced, but he bent to a kneel, his free hand bracketed around her hip, to keep himself or her steady, she did not know. 

Sansa gasped. “What are you—”

“Let me, please,” he begged, his grey eyes wide and dark, a storm of desperate desire. “Let me touch you here. I’ll only ever make you feel good, I promise.”

She nodded. Jon had never been one to break his promises. 

Sansa drew breath in sharp, short pants as he lifted the hem of her dress and ducked beneath it. 

“Jon,” she hissed. “What if—what if…” 

“Do you think I care if all of Winterfell sees how I feel for you?” he growled, trailing a hand downward through the still-red curls just above the juncture between her legs. “What can they do? Banish me to the Wall?”

The half-rational part of her brain urged her to point out that yes, indeed, the Jon who was their king likely would fret about his constituents, high-born and not, seeing him ravish his queen in the halls come morning, but then he shoved aside her smallclothes and his tongue licked up her center. 

Biting her lip was all she could do to keep from making a sound that would echo obscenely through the empty hallway. Sansa felt as though she could use the Wall at the moment, ice, snow, anything to relieve her from the heavy, heated sweeps of Jon’s tongue and the delicious ache it created. She remembered how in what seemed like an entirely other lifetime Myranda Royce had boasted and jested of such a thing, how exquisite it was, but Sansa had never imagined anything that could be quite like this, that the slightest touch, the lightest slide could buckle her knees, that it could be a pleasure so acute and arousing that it made her want to cry out his name, made her stifle her impulse to plead for more. 

This, this whatever it was called, she didn’t even know, somehow seemed even more intimate than the things they had done on their wedding night. Jon had been right; this was no duty or matter of his royal obligation, but rather a gift freely given, a demonstration of passion, an act of worship. 

Sansa let go of where her hands had evidently taken hold of his hair and the ends of her skirts and sagged backward, certain she would have collapsed had it not been for the sturdy wooden door against her back. The stones she reached out to grasp for purchase were warm, but not nearly as hot as the slick, scorching slide of Jon’s tongue, the strong, supportive curl of his hands to hold her up, and the rasp of his breath on the sensitive skin of her thighs. 

“Tell me if it doesn’t feel good,” Jon murmured, pushing a finger into her and kissing just above where she throbbed before returning to his task. 

“It’s—it’s good,” she could scarcely gasp out before moaning again. “Oh, oh—” 

She barely withheld his name this time, her brain driven too far into this insanity. She felt the tightness building, that infuriating feeling that had never amounted to anything for her before with Harry or anyone else, except the night she’d spent with Jon, when he had been able to coax her over the edge and into oblivion. Since then it had become more familiar to her, now that she held her own chambers and spent her nights alone, nights she brought herself back to the brink when she laid unable to sleep. 

But those releases had been nothing compared to what threatened to wash over her now, what she had accomplished herself paling as mere spikes in a sea of satisfaction. 

“Say my name, sweet girl,” Jon said, his voice rough and silken and rousing all at once. “Say it…” 

He moved off that sweet spot between her legs but didn’t let up on his ministrations inside, stroking against the places she herself could never reach. “Say it,” he prompted again. 

Even in lieu of his mouth, the feeling intensified, and there was no sense in denying its inevitable onslaught any longer. 

“Jon,” she cried at last. “Jon, Jon, _Jon._ ” 

He put the pressure back on and she came crashing down around his hand and against his tongue. It was easier to give in now that she knew what to expect, though nothing could have truly prepared her for this. Somewhere in the distance she was vaguely aware of Jon’s words, his tone softer now, soothing, encouraging, but no less sensual. 

“That’s it, that’s it,” he was whispering when she came to, pushing the sweaty strands that escaped from her carefully pinned-up hair out of the way. “That’s all I’ve thought of, Sansa. That’s all I’ve wanted, to see you, to feel you like that.” 

“Jon,” she sighed again, too sated to be upset with his slipup. 

Somehow she still had enough good sense to push open the door behind her in the brief respite it took Jon to straighten, and she tugged him into her chambers and barred the door.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and comments--they are very much appreciated! :)

Sansa caught Jon’s eye across the table as they broke their fast and grinned. He returned a shy smile, his face reddening, and bent back to eating his porridge. How he could be so sheepish around her in the presence of others when he said and did all manner of wanton things behind closed doors still befuddled and amused her. 

If they’d been alone in their chambers as they took their first meal of the day on occasion, when Jon was too wroth to dress or to see her do so, she would have teased him about this not having been his first taste of anything that morn. 

By now she had lost count of all the times Jon had treated her to such a pleasure, though she would always starkly recall the first time, the night of the feast Winterfell hosted in Alayne’s honor. After Jon had knelt to ravish her in the hallway, he took her against the door inside her chambers, and then again in her bed, and once more when they woke together in the darkness of night, bathed in the shadows of the moonlight. 

She knew the men and maids alike talked of how much time their king spent abed as of late with his queen. Sansa certainly heard the gossip, but she couldn’t bring herself to care when Jon’s tongue was between her legs, his warm hands skimmed over her smooth skin, or his cock pressed hard and wanting against her. They had coupled every which way over the past weeks, sometimes her atop him, sometimes her settled in his lap in her dressing room chair or perched on the desk in his solar, and last night he had even taken her like a wolf, his shouts and grunts muffled against her dark hair.

This was not the marriage a young Sansa had dreamed of, not one out of the songs where her fine husband would reserve his demure kisses for the back of her hand or practice courtly bows as part of his honorable greetings or gift her jewels to procure her happiness. _No,_ she thought wickedly as Jon ran a hand through his unruly curls, which she had mussed this morning in an attempt to draw him away from beneath her smallclothes and admonish him for making them late to breakfast after he made her peak for a second time and started to chase after a third, _this is better._

She didn’t know _what_ this was, but Jon was sweet, kind, and giving, and just the right amount of rough. They didn’t speak much of the nature of their relationship either; that would have wasted the precious moments they had alone together, when they found time to hide away in their chambers, abandoned stretches of keep, or anywhere else they could reasonably conceal themselves. On more than one occasion Sansa had wondered who each of them had become, when the prospect of Jon catching her walking the halls or the ramparts unaccompanied excited her more than any new dress or book of poetry. 

If anyone had asked Sansa if she’d loved Jon as a girl when they’d been children in Winterfell, she knew what the answer would have been. If they had asked the same when Alayne married him in the Vale, she would have said such a union was for the good of the realm, or perhaps that love would come in time, after years spent together running a kingdom and rearing babes like she’d witnessed her parents do. Now, though, she was not so sure how she would reply to that, and it frightened her. What they had she could not yet call love, no, but still, as she thought of the whispered words they shared as they laid beneath the furs together at night, the glances they exchanged outside of their chambers, and the things they engaged in within, she could not help but feel something potent that stirred her blood. 

_Bastard lust,_ she reminded herself whenever she found herself admiring Jon’s dark curls and full lips, saw him lacking his tunic in the yard after his daily practice with swords, or felt that ache for him as his palm slid along her thigh beneath the table at dinner. Surely this was a deviance of the highest order, a sickness which possessed no known cure, a madness of Targaryen, Lannister, and evidently now House Stark. 

But it did not always seem that way. There were moments where she swore she saw more than simple desire in Jon’s eyes, when his movements slowed and gentled, when they talked and laughed and she reveled in his company and the comfortable feeling of home. Unlike Harry the Heir, Jon never expected anything of her, never took liberties with her that she did not welcome, never made her feel anything but treasured and cherished. He sang her praises rather than listed her faults, encouraged her with a sense of tenderness and thoughtfulness whenever they attempted something new, and made her feel as though she were the only woman for whom he had ever had eyes. Those moments made her mind swirl with questions of what _this_ was, but for all her courage, she could not voice them, not when Jon had enough to manage, not when he already allowed her to burden him with her secrets, not when Jon let her be Sansa for him night after night, not when she had long ago accepted that perhaps no one else who knew or wanted Sansa Stark still lived. 

She knew what Jon would say anyhow, with the firm voice and stoic face of a king: that whatever they shared might be well and good, but it all came back to duty and honor, and anything besides that did not matter in times like these. 

Even though most of the representatives from the northern houses who arrived to attend her feast had returned home weeks ago, the population of Winterfell had continued to increase even with their departures. Visitors of all sorts came and went with great regularity. Sansa had long since grown accustomed to seeing unfamiliar faces in the Great Hall, milling about the yard, or flitting in and out of Jon’s solar—men looking for food or work from the king, messengers come with reports from the Wall, scouts relaying updates from the Neck in the south, the coastline of the sunset sea in the west, and east along the narrow sea. 

More smallfolk sought refuge from the difficulties of winter with each passing day, coming from as far as the mountain clans and areas so remotely southern Sansa suspected they technically belonged to the Riverlands. Even groups of wildlings continued to arrive, mostly women and children who struggled to survive at the forts Jon had set up along the Wall or the cramped hovels of Mole’s Town. Ever a gracious host, Sansa took it upon herself to find every one of them suitable, though nowhere near ideal, accommodations in the wintertown that long ago surpassed its usual capacity and began its spread in an increasingly disjointed sprawl the further it extended from the castle walls. It now covered any and all open space of the fields Sansa remembered racing across as a child, spanning from the walls of Winterfell to the edges of the wolfswood. 

So it was not a strange sight at all when Tormund entered the Great Hall and leaned over Jon’s shoulder, effectively interrupting his and Sansa’s dallying of eyes. “There’s someone here you might want to see.” 

“Once I’m finished I’ll take an audience with them in my solar,” Jon said, tearing off a mouthful of bread. 

“Perhaps not the best locale for this one,” Tormund said, one eyebrow now raised. “Besides, she don’ want to wait.”

Jon looked quizzical, and a moment later the doors opened again. 

The woman who entered would have been considered striking anywhere, but seemed especially so here in the midst of winter, in the rugged, wild North. She naturally possessed the kind of beauty Sansa had seen high-born ladies in King’s Landing pay for with loads of gold, seeking through their maids the teasing and twisting and taming of their hair, the painting of their faces, and the procuring of latest fashions. 

She needed none of those excesses, dazzling enough clad in all white from boots to breeches, gloves to cloak, her long, blonde hair bound in a braid not dissimilar from Sansa’s own. The Sansa of old would have been beguiled by this wildling who looked nothing like the savages and barbarians of the stories she had been told, yet she knew not what to think as she approached their table and Jon stood to greet her. 

“Look at you, a king in the South now,” she said, stopping before him to smile. “Shall I curtsy?” 

“Only if you allow me to bow for you, Princess of the Free Folk,” Jon replied before he broke into a grin. “Val.” 

He embraced her with a kind of easy familiarity Sansa hardly recognized; even in his own court, nowhere beyond the training yard or their bedchambers, did she see him dare to broach anyone on such affectionate terms.

And then Sansa noticed the boy who trailed her, clinging to the length of her furs—young, only a handful of years old, able to walk and run but still not quite yet talk. She watched as Jon released Val and instead swept the child up into his arms, tickling him as he shrieked and giggled, commenting on how much he had grown. A strange feeling settled in her stomach as she took in his dark features, not at all like Val’s honeyed hair or blue-grey eyes, the lines of his face already harsh, cut of the North. 

“You look well,” she said, stepping back to appraise him. “Like you have blood flowing through your veins again, or so I hear.” 

“Aye,” said Jon. The grey eyes Sansa had begun to think of as hers danced brightly. She had seen them dark and blown wide, witnessed them shine mischievously illuminated by candlelight, felt the power of their gaze upon her as they skimmed down her body, but she had never seen them quite like this outside of the privacy of their chambers. “Looking better than the last time you saw me, I’d hope.” 

“I’m not so sure about that. Last time I saw you, you were still adhering to those absurd vows. What were they all about again: to take no wives and father no children? To wear no crowns and win no glory?” she teased.

“You seem to have forgotten the parts about protecting against the darkness and shielding the realms of men,” he said. “Those I have not.” 

She glanced around the hall, her eyes flickering over the men assembled there with interest before her face grew solemn. “No, it appears not. Though if I had died for such, I do not think I would be so eager to turn right around and risk my life for all of it again.”

“You would,” Jon said, his voice gone soft. “You are no craven. You would if you knew it were the right thing to do.” 

Her guarded smile appeared again. “I’m not so sure of that. I believe I would have been a senseless fool to have waited around for that red witch to feed me and the little monster to the flames or for that wretched so-called queen to attempt to marry me off to some southern knight who wouldn’t know the difference between a weirwood and a willow.” 

Jon gave a sharp nod. “I would have expected nothing less. Forgive me, allow me to introduce my wife, the Lady of Winterfell, and Queen in the North, Alayne.” 

They exchanged pleasantries, Sansa playing her part, welcoming Val to the castle and complimenting her furs before she returned to her breakfast. There were no lemon cakes this morning, so instead she attempted to content herself with stale bread instead, hardly improved by the fruit preserves she spread across the surface. 

“… for a kneeler,” Val was saying once Sansa returned her attention to the conversation, her tone playful again. The mention of kneeling, though, reminded Sansa of the particular kinds of pleasures Jon had introduced her to, and she started to wonder if Jon had done the same for this woman, that ugly feeling twisting in her gut again. 

 

 

Jon indeed did take an audience with Val later in his solar to discuss matters of the free folk and beyond the Wall. Sansa spent the rest of the morning sewing in front of her fire, though she found it difficult to concentrate on the minute stitches when her hands were prone to fumble despite the warmth of the burning logs, and when needlework no longer served to distract, she took her daily walk through the wintertown, bringing foodstuffs and other necessities to those camped there in the snow that seemed to rise with every nightfall. 

Talking with the women she had grown close with and helping the children build up their snow forts served well enough as a diversion until she saw a flash of white beside black up on the ramparts, and not even the sight of Ghost rolling in a particularly large drift could draw her attention away when she subsequently passed Jon walking Val to the heart tree in the godswood on her way back into the castle. Sansa felt her insides burn with a feeling she hadn’t experienced since she last left Winterfell, something that would churn when Jon and Robb would always laugh at Arya’s jokes, when Septa Mordane praised Jeyne Poole or one of the other girls while she received a curt suggestion for improvement, when she thought Joffrey might have already been betrothed to another when Robert Baratheon came to call upon her father. Whatever it was, it tasted bitter, vile in her throat, even if she didn’t let the words that threatened to bubble up touch her tongue, and nothing, not even the wine she asked one of the serving girls to bring in the middle of the afternoon, could help her swallow it down. 

It was not that she had a problem with Lady Val herself—if the free folk had designations such as ‘lady,’ which she learned through her interactions with those in the wintertown they did not. Sansa prided herself on being an excellent judge of character: she had no other option, forced first to search out friends amongst the other women in King’s Landing, then reliant upon the information she could glean from those in the Vale, and even now remained prudent to seek out connections with those who she could trust in Winterfell, bound by the face of Alayne she wore. Val seemed capable, strong, and evidently had proven herself worthy of Jon’s trust. She suspected under different circumstances, she would have even enjoyed counting her as a friend. 

She knew her fears were unfounded, and yet they plagued her as she sat abed alone. Even if Jon cared for her now, she could not shake the idea that he had not chosen her, that if he had not been so bound by his position and duty and honor that he very well may have desired to marry a woman like Val instead, maybe even Val herself… He would have thrived with someone like this woman, someone like how she imagined Arya would have grown up. She had always been his favorite, after all. Maybe he would have even smiled outside of his chambers, as he crossed swords with her in the yard or toasted ale, things he would never expect of Sansa. 

By the time he returned, the sky had grown dark, and her flagon nearly empty. 

“I hoped I would find you here,” he said, dropping a kiss to her forehead. It seared even as he drew away. 

“How was your meeting?” she asked. 

“It went very well.” Jon poured himself the remainder of the wine. “Val will depart for the Long Barrow on the Wall in three days’ time. I mean to make her commander of the women garrisoned there.” 

Sansa blinked. _Commander?_ While it seemed he trusted her little with few matters beyond those of mingling amongst the free folk, running the keep, and prancing about in elegant furs as the lady of the castle, he thought nothing of this decision? Did having lived beyond the Wall make Val infinitely more competent than her, who had merely spent a lifetime locked in the Red Keep and imprisoned on a mountaintop in the Eyrie? Did having the experience of facing off against wild boars and bears, direwolves and dead men only matter, while lions and golden roses, mockingbirds and diamonds of red and white counted for nothing? 

“Oh. How… considerate of you.”

If a visitor of the likes of Val had appeared in the Vale and Lord Baelish had made such an announcement, Alayne would not have batted an eye. No, she would have been intrigued, she would have gossiped over the new development with Myranda, perhaps she would have even discussed the motivations for this choice and strategized behind closed doors with the man she had grown far too used to calling father. There deception and trickery had been a way of life, part of the greatest game one could play, her own means of survival. But not here, not anymore. Not in her home. Not with Jon. 

“Is something wrong?” Jon frowned, and she wished he wouldn’t because the expression with his furrowed brow and dark eyes full of concern and downturned lips made her invariably take pity on him.

She felt hot tears gather and turned away from him, frustrated and embarrassed. She opened her mouth to quell the tension that had gathered deep down inside, to tell him that it didn’t matter, that they would be expected at dinner soon so there was no time to air her concerns, but instead she found herself asking, “Was she yours?” 

“My what?” 

She could do little to make herself appear worse off, so she blurted, “Did you bed her?” 

“Val?” Jon sputtered and laughed—a deep, real, true laugh. The sound would have been lovely if not for the circumstances. “What? No, not Val…” 

Sansa stood tall, folded her arms across her chest, and jutted her chin out. She may have worn the dark hair of Alayne now, but she imagined the current picture of herself might have rang a little too true to the Sansa of old that perhaps still lived in the recesses of his memory. “Is it so illogical to assume?” 

He grimaced. “No, I suppose not.” 

“And—and the child?” she asked, wondering if she truly wanted to know or not. 

“Gilly’s.” Jon had told her of his friend Sam on their nights along the kingsroad. “Sansa, I wish to keep no secrets from you. And I will ask Val to leave at first light.”

“No, Jon, let her stay as long as she needs,” Sansa shook her head. “I did not misspeak before when I said she is welcome here.” 

Jon appeared torn. “Are you certain? Please tell me true. I do not wish to cause you any discomfort.” 

Sansa wanted to trust Jon. In the rational part of her mind, she knew she could believe him. But after years of treachery and deceit, of arranging her features in the manner of those of Alayne and singing only the pretty songs the ears around her wanted to hear, that did not come so easy for her now. 

When she did not reply, Jon closed his eyes and exhaled. “Sansa… What is this truly about?”

“Do you know how I served Lord Baelish, Jon?” She watched his eyes darken dangerously with the mention of his name and waited until he shook his head. “I acted as the lady of the Vale. I welcomed his guests. I organized his meetings. I made sure everyone under our protection was fed and watered, placated and pacified. And through all of it, I remained a perfect, silent little bird. I kept his secrets. I did not have leave to speak my mind in the presence of the other lords. I simply went about as a good lady should, giving my time and efforts without so much of anything in return.” 

Jon attempted to speak, but she continued on. 

“And now that I am here, I have asked myself: is it any much different? In some ways, yes. I am happier than I have been since I left with Father and Arya, since our family was whole. But yet I spend much of my time the same, only now with different faces who I greet and smile for, who I walk with and wait on.” 

Jon clasped her hands between his. They were unreasonably warm, and no matter what she expressed earlier, she felt herself melting against him as always. “I am sorry, Sansa. I did not wish to remind you of that, and I certainly do not want you to feel compelled to suffer the same here.” 

“No, that’s not it,” she sighed. “I am more than willing to continue to perform those duties; my intention is not to withdraw from them. I do all that is expected of the Lady of Winterfell and I do it well, however, I cannot help but think, should we not ask more of a queen?” 

Jon’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?” 

“Let me help you, Jon.” She slid her hands out from between his and wrapped them around his shoulders, where she knew he bore the weight of half the realm, where she could feel his muscles were tight with tension. “I know you never dreamed of ruling a kingdom. I am not suggesting you hand me your crown, merely that you permit me to exercise mine.” 

Jon swallowed hard, but she knew enough to realize he would never deny her anything she asked. “All right. What do you have in mind?” 

“Allow me to take on the kinds of matters you find taxing and tedious,” she said, twisting a few of his curls that had sprung loose around her fingers. “Maintaining correspondences with the houses, meeting with the lords to hear them air their complaints, hosting hours for the smallfolk to speak with us and offer their input. These are the things I am good at.” She smiled. “I don’t have to know how to go out and swing a sword to be able to help you.” 

“Those sound like agreeable terms.” He returned her smile. “I fear I may have made the mistake of vastly underestimating you, my lady. My apologies.” 

“You are forgiven,” she said. “I merely hoped you would recognize I’m no longer that sweet summer child anymore who sat up in her tower brushing her hair all day.” 

“I may not know much, but I am aware of that,” he said, his eyes glittering with mirth and something else now. He pulled her closer, and soon she was drowning in one of his knee-bending kisses to which she never seemed able to become accustomed. His hands slipped from her waist around to her back, and then lower. 

“Jon,” she whispered, intending for his name to be an admonishment, but instead it rushed out in a breathless gasp. “They’ll be waiting for us at dinner…” 

“We aren’t going to dinner,” he said, releasing her for a brief moment. His shirt was half unbuttoned before he closed the distance to lock the door. “Unless you are famished?” 

“No,” she said. Whatever hunger had lingered before in her belly evaporated the instant he turned to her with heat in his eyes, with the insistence of his hands upon her. “Are you not?”

“Starved,” he growled, hauling her back against him as he began to loosen the ties on her dress. She couldn’t bring herself to care that he would likely knot them in his urgency; she knew whatever time she spent untangling them on the morrow, it would be well worth. 

“I longed for this all day,” he said, backing her up to the bed. She almost paused to commend him for making it there this time around. 

“The company of a beautiful woman was not enough for you to enjoy?” she teased, removing his tunic and scratching her nails lightly down his chest and abdomen, taking care around the areas of his scars, despite his claims they hardly bothered him anymore. 

“No,” he said, the word little more than a whine. 

“No, you don’t find her beautiful?” she pressed. 

He huffed and shut his eyes as her hands drifted downward to the laces of his breeches, where she fumbled to untie them as his stiff cock interfered. “Of course I do. But I can scarcely think about that when I know you are somewhere about the castle, brushing your hair, waiting for me…” 

She smirked at his insolence. “However did you know?” 

“And besides, something has never quite forgotten she once threatened to geld me.” He nudged her with his erection. 

Sansa laughed. “Is that right? Was there just cause in that? Were you as wicked then as you are now?” 

“Good try, sweet girl,” he said, hitching up her skirts handful by handful so that her breathe caught in her throat each time he grazed against her skin, “But no one has ever made me as wicked as you have now.” 

As if she needed a demonstration, he pushed her backward onto the bed and fit himself between her legs, pressing his manhood against where she ached for him until she was soon begging for him to rid her of her smallclothes and himself of his breeches and fuck her proper. He set a quick, satisfying pace, each snap of his hips erasing the tension that had plagued her since she and Jon had left their chambers that morning. 

Sansa pushed his curls out of his face and held them together in one hand so she could see his face when he peaked, so she could witness the façade of a king fall, see Jon—stoic, strong, soft-spoken Jon—come undone.

Jon came with a snarl that sounded positively feral, and she understood as he came inside her, that no matter what had happened or who they were now to each other, she was his, and he hers. 

Afterwards she laid against Jon’s chest, his fingers tracing absent-minded patterns on her back, now exposed after he had yanked the fabric from her shoulders in the midst of his haste. She asked him to tell her of how he met Val, of his time with the free folk, of the name of his lover. When he told her, she felt only sympathy for their doomed relationship, sadness for this woman who had died in his arms. 

“Did you love her?” she asked.

He paused. “Yes. At least, I think so. It’s hard to tell, when I was so young.”

“I’m sorry you lost her.” 

“Ygritte was never really mine anyway. I was a member of the Night’s Watch for one, and I would have had to steal her for that to be true for another,” he said. 

“Steal her?” Sansa frowned. 

“Yes. The men are expected to take the wife of their choosing out of her home and away from her family and clan to claim her for their own, while she can put up as much or as little of a fight as she wishes depending on whether he is a pleasing choice to her.” He gave a short laugh. “It does sound rather barbaric when you put it that way, doesn’t it?” 

“No more so than the arrangement of an advantageous betrothal or the bedding ceremony itself.” Sansa grinned. “It sounds kind of exciting, actually.” 

“If the so-called thief manages to escape unscathed, perhaps.” 

“Do you think taking me from the Vale counts?” she teased, but he regarded her with his serious grey eyes. 

“No,” he finally said at long last. “Taking back from someone what is not theirs is not stealing.” 

 

 

Jon kept true to his word. 

Sansa continued on with her usual activity, going out into the wintertown to visit with the free folk and smallfolk, distributing blanks and food, bringing those who required more detailed care within the castle walls. She asked them of their needs, their wishes, their hopes and dreams, and she discovered that most of them wanted the same as she did: to be safe and warm and happy with their families, things like gold and castles, fancy dresses and titles long forgotten in times like these. 

She did her best to fulfill their wishes, even the simple ones like meals hot from the grates in the kitchens and candles to accompanying the free folk to the heart tree in the godswood. The kindnesses cost her little, and were well worth their smiles and appreciation. She had not forgotten what she’d promised herself long ago in King’s Landing, that she would give them what she could, and that she would make the smallfolk love her. As with Jon, Sansa could not say whether or not it was love yet, but there at least seemed to be a great fondness, admiration, and respect on both sides. 

In between her usual duties, though, Jon included her in his meetings, encouraged her to send ravens to houses far and small to make her acquaintance, and sought her input on the plans to restore Winterfell and the North to its former strength. On this afternoon, she sat in their solar, entertaining lords Forrester and Slate while she used the opportunity to ask them of their food stores. They had just finished their rounds of mint tea and lemon cakes and stood to leave when a knock came at the door. 

“A raven for you, Your Grace,” said Maester Medrick. 

She thanked him, marveling at the speed with which she had achieved a response from her new contacts as she believed it was certainly too soon to have yet received any replies from the reaches of the coastline of the narrow sea, northward to Skagos, and south in the marshy, mysterious depths of the Neck.

Sansa took the parchment to read beside the firelight. It must have been opened inadvertently along with the rest of the correspondences intended for Jon; she brushed away the remnants of black wax, the already-broken seal making it impossible to recognize the sigil of the sender. The paper unfurled to reveal a most recognizable hand. 

_Dear Daughter,_ she read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm... what could Littlefinger possibly want?


	7. Chapter 7

Sansa rolled the scroll back up as tightly as she could and curled her fingers around the parchment so it flattened against her palm as she walked. This way she could no longer see the words, but that made no difference. They were more frightening now, existing in her mind, where they contorted to mean a thousand things, hinted at a hundred schemes. 

Her stomach twisted, her heart pounded with each step that echoed off the stone. The words themselves were benign enough, but that gave her no comfort. On the contrary, they rather terrified her. Petyr was not one for pleasantries. 

She thought of how he’d orchestrated Joffrey’s murder from afar without leaving so much of a trace of a suspicion behind, of what he’d said with a smile as they sailed away from King’s Landing: “ _Widowhood will become you, Sansa._ ” 

But at least she wasn’t Sansa anymore, not really, anyway, not to him. 

She remembered what he’d told her when they’d crafted Alayne, how he’d taught her a hidden dagger was more dangerous than one faced in the open. It made no matter his message now was gilded in apparent affection and concern. It was a blade brandished. 

Petyr had known. He had known she would likely not be the first to lay eyes on his letter in Winterfell, that even if she eventually did, there would be an initial recipient, that someone else, perhaps even Jon himself, would open it and read his words before she did. Was that the point? Was that his game? 

She thought again on the line that worried her the most. _How fares our King? Will he be able to protect you when the true test of the long winter comes?_ he had written. Petyr was a fool, though, if he thought he could best Jon at that. Jon _was_ winter, he was the fierce, harsh winds, the solid ice, the swirling snows, of that she had no doubt. 

The door to Jon’s solar was open, and a sheaf of correspondences awaiting response sat on his desk as he poured over them. 

“I have news,” Jon said, holding a parchment of his own unfurled in his hand. His smile partially alleviated the worry in her gut. “Sam and Gilly are on their way back north from Oldtown—they should arrive within a moon’s turn.” 

“Oh.” Sansa had looked forward to meeting Jon’s closest friend from Castle Black if she got the chance. “That’s—that’s great news.” 

“It seems they’ll be bringing along not only Mance’s son they took south but also a babe of their own,” he said, his grin widening. It faded once he looked up at her, though. “Is something the matter?”

She held out the letter to him, and he took it. 

“ _I pray this letter finds you well. I miss you immensely, sweetling,_ ” Jon read aloud, cringing at the term of endearment. Even though the words gave her chills, they already seemed less threatening spoken in the deep, soothing tone of his voice. “ _If I am correct, you should have arrived in Winterfell by now, even barring any delays. How fares our King? Will he be able to protect you when the true test of the long winter comes? It will be a trying time for us all._ ” 

He paused, and Sansa prompted him to go on. “ _I hope I taught you well, dear daughter. Remember your lessons now that you are in the wolf’s den._ ” 

He did not read the closing salutation, but she knew Petyr had signed it with, “ _Father._ ” 

Petyr had told her a great many things during her time in the Vale: that Jon would be a wildling himself now, coarse and savage, that he would have been corrupted by the Night’s Watch, or even perhaps a corpse reanimated if the tales that drifted south from the Wall were to be true. Sansa understood the game, she recognized the lines while Alayne did not, could not see them for such, choosing to always believe her father’s pretty words for her own sake. Not any longer. 

“He wants something,” she said. 

Jon reread the words before he crumpled the parchment in his fist. “Words are wind.” 

“Not his,” she said, willing her voice remain steady. No, Petyr’s words were a quarrel in Ser Dontos’s belly, poison in Joffrey’s cup, a shove of Aunt Lysa out the moon door, one dose of sweetsleep in Sweetrobin’s milk after another. She would not allow them to ensnare Jon the way he had countless others. “You don’t know of what he is capable.” _I do. I have seen it with mine own eyes._ “What shall I reply?” 

“You wish to respond?” he asked, almost in a tone of amusement. “I know you are far more clever with words than I, but I cannot think of any polite response to that.” 

“It does not have to be polite,” she said, fear causing her voice to rise instead. _The game is not one of capricious words and courtesies._ With no reply, Littlefinger’s next missive might be a gift sent their way in the form of a threatened revelation or a summons from Cersei.

Any trace of mirth left Jon’s eyes, and he grew serious again. “Do you recall I went to war for a letter once before?”

_Of course._ How could she have forgotten? Jon had left his post, his brothers, his defense of the realm at the Wall all for their sister. He had died for his response to the words in that letter; he had risked his second chance in this world for them. Yet when Jon and his wildlings and the northmen he could rally to his cause bore down upon Winterfell, not a trace of Arya was to be found… only some of Ramsay’s dead whores he had slaughtered before he met his own demise at the end of Jon’s blade. 

“We must maintain the charade,” she said. “He will know—if we do not respond, he will know something is afoot.”

“And what will he find? What will he do? Come to the North, in waist-deep snow? Then I welcome him to make the attempt.” 

“He can be a valuable ally!” she said in a near shout. _It is not him as an ally I worry, but him as a foe._

Jon’s voice matched hers now even as he closed the gap between them. “To whom? I have no wish to go south.”

Arguing like this heated her blood, their proximity doing even more to stir the desire for him that never lurked far from the surface nowadays, Jon’s darkened eyes almost enough to make her forget her frustration, his indifference. 

He held her face in his hands, and at last he softened. “You owe him nothing, Sansa. He took you as a child, and he protected you, so yes, for that I am unspeakably grateful. But he is not your father, nor your family. Here you have nothing to fear.” 

_That isn’t how he sees it,_ she should have told him. Instead she allowed Jon’s kisses to ease her worry and erase her concern, no words preferable to troubled ones. 

 

 

Sansa sighed as Jon bent her backward over the furs of their bed, grateful for the opportunity to continue where they had left off earlier now that they had finally retired to their chambers for the night. This was the direction in which they had been headed earlier, Jon’s hand already up her skirts and his lips gliding across the exposed expanse of her chest down to her teats, when a knight in the service of Lady Cerwyn knocked, bringing with him the daily report of the newest arrivals of smallfolk and free folk in Wintertown and the current numbers of their stores there. She supposed at least the man had possessed that much common courtesy; if he had instead tried the handle of the unbolted door, he would have interrupted his king and his queen in a most compromising position. 

Jon rocked against her now with enough force to drive the wooden frame of the bed into stone it rested against, each thrust pressing his hard cock against her core through their remaining clothing, not that it was much left. He had divested her of nearly everything but her smallclothes almost before they had made it out of the hallway and behind their closed door, and now only those of hers remained, Jon himself completely bare though his skin was hot to the touch, as though it were the fairest night of summer rather than yet another in a seemingly endless winter. 

It would have been embarrassing, truly, if anyone besides Jon had known how she craved him, how she thirsted for his attentions and longed for his touch. The Sansa of old would have been mortified, too, for him to have been completely aware of the depth of her affections, but her potential humiliation was alleviated by the knowledge that he desired her just as much. 

“I’ve wanted you all day,” he growled in between rough, hasty kisses. “On my desk in the solar… on the table at dinner…”

“On the steps outside?” she teased, recalling how she had nearly slipped on the ice there when Jon had grabbed her around the waist and hauled her against him for a hungry kiss once they were out of view of the Great Hall. 

“Aye, it would have melted quick enough and have been perfectly safe,” he said, eyes glittering with amusement. “Or I would have borne the brunt. I wouldn’t have wanted my lady wife’s fine porcelain skin or her posterior to have suffered frostbite.”

She attempted to retort that she felt the exact same way about him as she had become rather fond of his rear as well, but Jon caught her in another one of his deep kisses before she could get the words out. His tongue slid against hers, and she felt heat pool in her belly. As much as she hated to admit it, Jon probably had the right of it; she would have been plenty warm outside with her body pressed up to his, his hands and his lips on her. 

When she reemerged for air after several long and passionate minutes, she heard a faint tapping again, the sound seemingly further away this time. It was no longer most certainly not the bed frame against the wall, as Jon was now otherwise occupied with undoing the laces of her smallclothes and tossing them to the floor.

“Jon,” she said thickly, struggling to maintain her sense of sanity through the haze brought on by the feel of hand slipping between her legs. “Did you not hear?”

Jon didn’t even seem to register that she had spoken at all, much less the question itself. 

She tugged at his hair from where he dropped kisses down her neck. “I think someone’s at the door.” 

“Whatever it is, they can wait til morn,” he rumbled, burying his face in the swell of her breasts. 

“Your Grace?” came a tentative voice from beyond the threshold of the door. 

Jon continued his downward descent, undeterred. The words Sansa meant to speak turned to sighs as his tongue swirled around one nipple and then the other. 

The raps came again, louder this time. “Your Grace, may I enter?” 

He replaced his mouth with his hands and began to kiss down her sternum, to her belly, past her navel… 

The knocking failed to cease. “Your Grace, please… there’s a man here…” 

_Petyr,_ Sansa thought at once. But no, surely even he would have the decency to wait until a reasonable hour… 

“Seven fucking hells.” Jon groaned and stood up, his arousal obvious. “What good is being king if I cannot do as I please?” 

He threw the furs over Sansa and drew a drying cloth around his waist. She could not help but laugh. “Don’t you think that’s a bit… revealing?” 

“They ought to know what they’re interrupting for this foolishness at this hour,” he growled and wrenched open the door. 

Sansa did not recognize their unwelcome guest as any more than one of Winterfell’s night watchmen, though her chances may have been better if his expression had not been one stricken in fear and if he had not been trembling like a dry autumn leaf caught in a vicious winter wind. 

“What?” Jon snarled. 

“There’s a man here,” he repeated, voice shaking, glancing over Jon’s shoulder into the room and immediately bowing his head and averting his eyes once he saw Sansa abed. Unfortunately that alternative position put him right flush with Jon’s bare chest. He swallowed and forced his gaze to meet his king’s, his face thoroughly reddening. “He awaits a meeting with you in the Great Hall.” 

“Give him food, find him shelter,” Jon said dismissively. “Tell him I will tend to his other needs come morning.” 

“We—we have,” he stuttered. Sansa felt sorry for the poor man; she wondered what short straw he had drawn or what kind of wager he had lost to be the unfortunate one tasked with summoning Jon. “He says he’s traveled a great distance to treat with you. That he brings someone of the utmost importance to see you.” 

“And who is this man? From where does he come? Where in Westeros is it proper manners to demand things from any man, no less a king, when he is retired in his chambers with his lady wife?” Jon queried. 

“I—I do not know. He said he’ll only give his name for you, Your Grace,” said the sentry. “He—he did apologize, but he insists…” 

Jon relented at last. “I will give this man a minute of my time, and nothing more. I have other matters to see to this evening.” 

He shut the door and dropped the towel to reach for his breeches and tunic, where they had been hastily discarded beside the door earlier. “Sansa, I…” 

“No matter. I will come with you,” she said. Sansa waved away Jon’s insistence that she should stay here and wait in the warmth, claiming she could not rest easily here alone if this required such urgency. Instead she slid from beneath the furs, retrieving what she could find of her clothing, and wrapping a thick dressing gown made of wool around herself before she slipped into her boots. 

They spoke little as they made their way across the silent yard, their tracks from their prior sojourn to the keep, even the icy stairs on which she had almost slipped, nearly erased by the gently falling snow. 

The doors to the Great Hall swung open upon their arrival. All the eyes of those inside fixed on them, some filled with curious interest, others fearful. She glanced over at Jon, and he wore the same worn, wary look he had when he spoke of the Others. _Could they be upon us?_

At the nearest table sat the man in question. He looked to be no more of nobility than the sentry who had disturbed them to Sansa; he was an older man, thin, ragged, with long grey hair and an unkempt beard to match. A filthy woman with a tangle of dark hair tumbling down her back sat across from him, and they were accompanied by a younger boy, who feasted ravenously from the bowl of porridge in front of him. _Wildlings?_ she wondered. Bands still turned up on a daily basis, but none demanded to enter the walls of Winterfell, nor came to dine in the Great Hall or sought attendances with Jon. 

“Your Grace.” The man stood at once and took a knee. Sansa noticed he missed part of his fingers on one hand. Had he suffered such on this journey to Winterfell? Frostbite? An animal attack? Or had he befallen some other danger, something more sinister, or other-worldly perhaps? “I apologize for waking you at this ungodly hour.” 

No, his accent seemed from the south, not the far north… 

She looked to the boy again. _His son?_ No, they did not share the same features… and when he stared back, Sansa saw a look of defiance she recognized whenever her mother had tried to force Arya into a dress, when someone had tried to best Robb at swords, even at times on Jon’s face—

A great, hulking beast of matted black fur rose from the floor, its eyes glowing bright green, its lip curled in a snarl. 

Jon ignored the creature. He moved past the man and towards the boy as though he were approaching the wild animal itself, his hand outstretched in an overture of peace. In that moment, he then saved Sansa from giving herself away. 

“Rickon?”


	8. Chapter 8

If Sansa had erred and blurted her brother’s name, though, it wouldn’t have mattered. Each member of the small crowd present in the Great Hall stood agape in the deafening silence that followed Jon’s question. 

After a brief moment, nearly all of them began to speak at once. Sansa scarcely remembered when she thought back later of what had been said, her head spinning. 

And then Osha—as she later learned was the wildling woman’s name—asked, “The other boy—is he here? Is he alive?”

Jon frowned, his confusion evident. “Other boy?” 

Sansa knew, though. _Bran._ Her heart seemed to skip a beat and then strained in her chest when she realized it necessary to maintain her silence. Would Alayne have known the names of her husband’s half-brothers? How could she, when they hardly spoke of them? Sometimes it seemed almost as though Sansa herself did not recall them anymore, her memory faded on whether Rickon’s hair had been more of a pale red or a shiny copper like hers, if Bran’s eyes were a bright blue or a darker shade. 

When Osha made mention of Summer and the sweet giant who accompanied him, Jon shook his head sadly, telling her that no, there had been no word of Bran or Hodor since the fall of Winterfell. 

In the days afterward, as their newest guests enjoyed their fill of food and rested upon proper beds under sturdy roofs for the first time in many moons, they told no one else of their presence but those who needed to know, and even then the maids and hands were sworn to secrecy. Even still, word leaked out, of a direwolf black as night to go along with the one white as snow, of the wildlings who lived within the castle walls and the keep itself, of the southerner who had come from the wrong way, descending upon Winterfell from the North rather than coming up the kingsroad. Sansa waited for someone to wonder why Alayne from the Vale had taken such an interest in their strange guests, but no one ever did. That was what they had come to expect of her, their queen and the Lady of Winterfell, and she would have wanted nothing less. 

That didn’t keep her mind from swirling, though. Rickon was here, Bran had survived the Ironborn and the sack of Winterfell… If Bran still lived, perhaps their family was not so far lost as they thought. Jon seemed convinced Arya was not gone either. Whether it had something to do with his brief period on the other side or the close connection he’d always seemed to share with their sister, Sansa could not say. Whenever she asked Jon of his reasoning, he merely said it was a feeling, one he could not explain. 

_It is easier to be Alayne,_ Sansa thought. Alayne did not have to be both Jon’s wife and Rickon’s sister; Jon was merely Alayne’s husband, not also her brother. Alayne had no siblings missing or dead, no slain parents to mourn. Alayne had no living kin; only a mother she had never known, and a father she met late in life as a woman flowered. Alayne had no brother she married, only a king who gave her a name and a crown, a castle and a kingdom. 

Being Alayne had not been difficult in the Vale, even when any misstep could have meant her life, nor had it been a challenge when she smirked and seduced Harry, drawing confidence from the camouflage of her darkened hair and deep-cut dresses, her free-flowing flirtations and coquettish teasing. It had not even been much of a bother when she came to Winterfell, with all the attendants and smallfolk she’d never laid eyes on before, the castle a shell of the home she remembered. But once Jon ordered everyone else out of the Great Hall the night Rickon reappeared, for the first time in a long time it became a struggle to no longer be Sansa.

“This is…” Jon paused, allowing her to speak her own name. 

“Alayne,” Sansa supplied, her heart wrenching as Rickon merely nodded. Had Osha and the man who introduced himself as Ser Davos Seaworth, hand to the ill-fated Stannis, not been present, she may have spoken freely, but perhaps not. Had Littlefinger ruined her to such an extent that she could no longer trust her own brother? Well, the brother she had not wedded and bedded, in any case. 

There had been so many times she had hoped and prayed to be able to remember her name, when the Lords Declarant had ascended to the Eyrie, when Alayne had become thick as thieves with Myranda Royce at the Gates of the Moon, when Jon’s grey eyes settled on her in the sept in the Vale, and now she fervently wished one day she would be able to forget. 

Rickon had changed as well. It was to be expected, certainly, that he would now rival their height and possess the gangly limbs of a child well on his way to becoming a man grown, but those were not the reasons they no longer recognized him as the happy babe who’d bounced on her mother’s lap, who’d always laughed and smiled, who’d seemed to have inherited few of the traits of the stoic, brooding Starks. Tamed was perhaps not the right word for Rickon upon his return, though he had been tempered, perhaps. 

He still bore a sense of firm adamance, still carried a sense of wild without restraint, but he was no longer the carefree child full of boundless vigor he had been when Jon and Sansa had left Winterfell. Although he was still years younger than Robb had been when he’d gone off to war and been crowned a king, Sansa imagined they would have looked alike—weathered by the paths forced upon them, tormented by the horrors they had experienced, haunted by what they had lost. Jon may have been the one that had died and returned to the living during their time apart, but something within Rickon had perished, too. 

“Do you remember Father and your mother?” Jon asked cautiously one night as they sat together in Rickon’s chambers. They were careful to avoid spending much time together beyond these walls, worried about whose prying eyes could be watching, what eavesdropping ears would overhear, the precious knowledge that could escape the strong stone walls of Winterfell and traverse distances by raven. 

Rickon flicked his blade over the wooden point of the arrow in his hand again and again. He found it a struggle to sit still for too long, his hands always occupied. “You look like Father.” 

Jon nodded and began to ask about the rest of them then in turns, slowly weaving their names into the conversation. It seemed difficult to remember that after all this time, after all that had happened, Rickon was still younger than Sansa had been when she rode south with Father and Robert Baratheon’s host to King’s Landing, when her hopes had been so high for what she had been certain was the beginning of her very own fairytale. Jon talked of how Robb had carried Rickon around Winterfell on his shoulders, told him of how Arya had loved archery too, reminded him of the day Bran had helped bring home the direwolf pups. And then he asked what he recalled of Sansa. 

Rickon reached for the feathers at the foot of his chair and began affixing them as fletchings onto the opposing end of his arrows. “I remember the stories she would tell and the songs she sang. And I remember her with Lady, brushing her hair.” 

Rickon did not ask what had happened to her, even when Jon remained quiet, waiting for him to continue. Sansa glanced away and stared into the flames, not trusting herself to meet Jon’s gaze, her eyes burning with unshed tears. 

Their reminiscing ended soon after, liberating her from the bittersweet moment, the hour late and Rickon not one much for conversation. Besides the night they spoke of them, Rickon never mentioned those they had lost. He did not spend much time inside at all, preferring the ice and snow of outside, claiming the rooms within the heated walls were too warm. Sansa thought he rather felt stifled, confined here compared to the vast expanses he’d become accustomed to, preferring action to discussion. 

Instead Jon and Sansa sought more information from Ser Davos. The man was blunt and forthcoming, with his honest face and no reason at all to relay falsehoods now with Stannis many moons gone, most of his forces having perished starved and frozen in the snow, and those who survived that ordeal ended up with a worse fate, smashed against the walls of Winterfell by the Boltons. Even still, each part of the story he recounted seemed more fantastical than the previous. The part about Stannis sending Ser Davos as an envoy to treat with Wyman Manderly they could believe well enough; Stannis had needed all the aid in the North he could gather towards the end as he prepared to face the Boltons. It was everything that came after they found more difficult to comprehend, from Manderly surreptitiously turning on the Boltons when many a witness had seen him dine joyfully with them at Ramsay’s wedding feast to his double-cross of Cersei and the Iron Throne. 

He spoke of traveling along the eastern coast of the North from White Harbor to Skagos, of the frigid sea that turned near to ice at night if not for the whip of the wind and the swell of the waves, of the string of wrecked ships along the frozen shore. 

He told them about the ice caves of the Skagosi, burrows nestled into the icy tundra built to keep out the biting cold, about the shaggy, horned creatures the rest of Westeros liked to believe were unicorns but seemed more goat than horse, about how the people there favored strength over any name, though if such a concept of honor or devotion existed there, then Rickon had certainly received it. They had taught him their ways of survival, how to make use of the smallest bits of scrap and refuse and how to sharpen arrowheads and nick obsidian into daggers. They had ensured his protection and made certain he was capable of protecting himself, so much so that he had not wanted to leave the island that had been a home to him for near as long as Winterfell ever had. 

He reported of what they saw from a distance as they traversed the Bay of Seals, of wildlings flocking to the edge of Eastwatch as they tried to escape along the coastline of the haunted forest, of dead men too on the coasts beyond the Wall, their blue eyes piercing the night like distant lanterns on the shore.

Beside her, Jon listened with rapt, grave attention, waiting to speak until Ser Davos finished his tale. 

“Lord Manderly was here moons ago, and he supported my claim,” Jon said. “If he knew Rickon lived…” 

“Perhaps he did not,” Davos shrugged. “It’s been years since Lord Wyman sent me on my way. Like as not, they probably thought us dead. Why say something and risk being made a fool or liar for providing false hope?” 

“If Lord Manderly sent you, then why did you not return by way of White Harbor?” Sansa asked. 

She thought back to what Ser Davos had told them of their journey the night they arrived, when he detailed the second and perhaps equally as perilous leg of their trip from the coast at the mouth of the Broken Branch river inland to Winterfell. They crossed over the lands that had belonged to the Hornwoods, still left in a state of disarray and abandonment after Ramsay and the Bolton men had swept through. While treacherous to go on foot and by horse with the drifts of snow and icy lakes and rivers, they had managed to avoid detection. The conditions had mattered little to Osha or Rickon anyhow; they were of the North and had become inured to the cold long ago. 

“A good smuggler stays out of sight, and how could that be with that great wolf of his? Dead useful, but not exactly easy to conceal.” Ser Davos’s gruff manner momentarily broke with a smile. 

“In any case, we saw no sense in going back there, not with Winterfell now in Stark hands,” he continued. For a moment Sansa worried he had looked to her, but it was to Jon he spoke next. “You’re whom the boy was sent to see anyway, after the Boltons drove out the Ironborn and put the castle to the torch.” 

Jon glanced over at her. She knew what he thought, understood his suspicions. They knew naught of this man who came to them claiming possession of their brother. Both had cast doubt in their chambers the night Rickon returned as they laid awake, the castle quiet yet again after the momentary panic their arrival had struck, both wondering aloud if they could trust their eyes and the feeling that tugged their hearts, or if they were simply seeing what, or rather who, they wished to see. 

“I thought the same when I first saw you,” Jon had said that night. “What is there more harm in, believing or not believing?” 

Sansa didn’t know then any more than she knew now. 

But yet as fantastical as the story was, how could they deny any of it, especially after what Jon himself had faced? They were in no place to disbelieve. Ser Davos had no motive to fool them, and no reward seemed to justify the risks he had taken, none besides a deep love of honor and a rare sense of decency. 

There was no doubting the direwolf anyway; that such a beast would be loyal to anyone but a Stark, anyone but Rickon himself was undeniable. That was not to say Shaggydog had been tamed either; he regularly snarled at those who were unfamiliar and his behavior varied in accordance with Rickon’s mood. At least his coat boasted a sort of lackluster shine now, as he ate scraps from the kitchens alongside Ghost rather than fending for himself in the woods and slept in front of a roaring fire most nights instead of being exposed to the outside elements. Underneath it was still just as tangled as ever though, all attempts to tame it through brushing or bathing having failed. He seemed to prefer remaining unkept, much as Rickon refused to change into the clothes Sansa had made for him, preferring the furs and plain leathers of the style of the Skagosi, which were more similar to that of the Free Folk than anything befitting a lord or king. 

“This cannot be kept a secret,” Jon said, looking over at Sansa, his eyes running over her darkened hair.

_Which one?_ She wanted to ask, she would have asked had they been alone, but there had been no time for that, not since Rickon’s return and the demands of winter and ruling the largest of the Seven Kingdoms continued to intensify.

“What do you suggest we do, Your Grace?” Ser Davos asked. He had sworn himself to the King and Queen in the North and their cause the night he arrived in Winterfell, offering his sword and service in any manner needed. 

“We have no choice,” Jon said “Rickon is the rightful king.” 

Sansa knew Jon thought with his heart, with his honor. Certainly it was the righteous thing to do, but where had honor gotten their father, or Robb? They had been met with death and defeat, their names tainted to anyone south of the Neck. And so she assured herself it was with that motive she spoke when she said, “These men chose you. They trust you, respect you. Rickon is not even yet of age…”

“And if I may, Your Grace, my Queen,” Ser Davos added, continuing when Jon motioned for him to proceed, “The boy knows fewer letters than I do. He has practiced little other than the art of hunting and survival in his absence. If you were to put the question to him now, I doubt he would have much understanding of the true meaning of what he was being asked to accept or decline.”

They settled that this was no time to sow discord or confusion in their vassals, that Jon would remain king or serve as regent for as long as necessary, and that the matter would be further discussed later, once Rickon became accustomed again to life in Winterfell, but Sansa did not feel settled as they adjourned. 

She cursed herself as her appalling, traitorous feelings that had plagued her ever since Rickon’s return bubbled up again, but with each passing day she found herself unable to repress the thoughts any longer. All she had wanted in King’s Landing, all she had thought of in the Vale had been returning home, her fondest hope to reunite her family and forget all that had happened to tear them apart. As the chances of that ever happening dwindled, her wishes merely became silly dreams, just as she’d always hoped for the tales of Florian and Jonquil and Naerys and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight to come true as a child, for they were all gone and it was as if they had never existed. Winterfell had been taken, and Sansa herself was no more, just Alayne in her place, Alayne who would never be able to leave the Vale, who would never have a claim to Winterfell, who had nothing as a bastard in any case. 

And now… now that she had returned home and was no longer alone, now she found herself still hoping and wishing, yes, yet on the other hand fearing the possibility. 

What if Bran and Arya returned as well? Rickon may have been too young when he left Winterfell to remember, but if Jon had recognized her out of place in the Vale, hair darkened, and dressed in the colors of House Baelish, they certainly would too here in their home. And even more, they would recognize what was going on between her and Jon—it would be no longer their secret, but an abomination for the rest of the world to see. 

What would they do? She would give up Jon for the sake of her family, but she did not wish to, and she knew it would be painful and may prove impossible for them both. Even though Rickon’s arrival relieved them of the need the produce a Stark heir, there were other matters to consider that hinged on the state of their union as well. What of Winterfell? The smallfolk here relied on their leadership, their resources, their protection. Their lives, too, would be at risk if anything were to splinter that. 

Despite all of those practical issues, Sansa forced herself to admit the truth: she would miss Jon, she would miss having him to herself, she would miss being the one he turned to and miss him being the one she turned towards. She would miss the intimacy they worked so hard to build, both the whispers they shared at night while waiting for sleep to come and otherwise, she would miss his hands on her, his lips sliding down her chest, his tongue languidly licking between her legs… 

She grew heated merely thinking of how he had given her such pleasures. How would she feel then when she saw him shirtless out in the yard, unable to stop watching unabashedly yet at once unable to touch him? How would she be able to smile when he sat beside her at dinner, knowing they would not be able to retire together to their chambers whenever they so wished? How empty would her bed seem, the pillows and furs of his side gone cold? 

She could think of nothing she wanted more than the safe return of her family so they could be as whole as possible again, but those were questions she did not wish to be forced to answer. Sometimes she wished they could travel far away from here, that that would be the easiest solution. When Sansa had first gone south with her father and Arya, she had dreamt of the sun and splendor of King’s Landing, when Alayne had hidden away in the Vale, she longed for her family and the familiarity of Winterfell, and now whoever she was, she found herself sometimes fantasizing of Essos, the safety and anonymity the Free Cities would offer, somewhere her hair could grow out red again and no one would question Jon’s scars, somewhere without the threat of the Others or the responsibilities they inherited by the virtue of their name and their blood.

That could never be, though, not when winter had come. Their place had to be here in Winterfell, carrying on the family name, protecting those that sought refuge with them, rallying the smallfolk to survive the freezes and snows as House Stark had done for thousands of years. No matter what she felt for Jon now, those would be her priorities. There was no time for such needless scandal when death strayed so close for them all. 

In the end, she didn’t know which she feared more: that she would be shamed by the whole world knowing the true nature of their relationship, or that she would not be ashamed at all. 

 

 

Jon still seemed troubled when he returned later to their chambers. Sansa heard him place more wood on the fire while she changed into her nightshift, and when she emerged from behind the screen, he was staring into the roaring flames, his hands curled around the edge of the mantle. His cloak and gloves laid across the back of one chair, dusted with melting snowflakes, and the rough-spun fabric of his tunic and the hard leather jerkin he still wore stood out in sharp contrast to her soft, woolen dressing gown and slippered feet. 

“There is naught you can do now,” she said, approaching him slowly as though she feared he might leave that very moment to pour over the mounting missives from the other northern houses or take inventory in the stores, both tasks to which they had been unable to attend in the flurry of recent days. 

“Do you not worry?” he asked. When she drew closer, she could feel not only the heat radiating from the fire ensconce her in its warmth, but also that of him. She wondered if he had always been so warm, or if the fire only started to burn inside after he’d been resurrected by the Red Woman and her god of light.

“I must confess I spend a great deal of time worrying,” she admitted. “And I’m afraid I have little to show for it.” 

“What do you worry for?” he said, his tone solemn, devoid of any jest. 

She watched the flames dance, how the wood crackled and popped. “Mostly silly things, I suppose.” 

“They are not silly things to me if they are important to you.” 

She sighed. “I worry the men in the wintertown who have seen many a nameday may find themselves burdensome to their families, and that the wolfswood may call to them. I worry if the free folk find themselves adjusting to life here, and what they see for themselves after winter. I worry how Alys Karstark has written that she is with child again, after she endured a difficult birth of the first… and I worry about you.”

“You need not worry for me,” he said at once, turning towards her. 

She studied him, his long Stark face that reminded her so of Father and Arya, the scar around his eye that had yet to all the way fade, how he looked as much a King of Winter as any one of the likenesses in the crypts. “Are you certain?” 

“Well…” He cast his eyes toward the ceiling. “As long as we are confessing, I must admit it feels quite nice to be the subject of your concern.” 

“If it means anything to you, I think you need not worry for yourself. This is what Robb wanted,” she said, cupping Jon’s cheek in her hand. “He trusted you. He knew you were as much a Stark as any of us.” 

“Only because he thought you a Lannister,” he said, placing his hand over her own. “And Robb is dead. It matters not what he wants.” 

“And have you thought of what Rickon may want? He very well may not want a kingdom…” 

“Did I wish for one?” Jon asked with a short, humorless bark of a laugh. “What choice did I have?” 

“A few. You could have stayed dead for a start,” she said, a smile playing around her lips. “You could have remained Lord Commander at Castle Black, or forsaken your vows for Dorne or Sothoryos. You could have left Winterfell to the Boltons, or let the North fight a civil war for it. You could have married any woman you wished. You could have broken your word in the Vale once you knew…” 

“Aye, I suppose,” he said, softening when his hand wrapped around hers and he placed both over his heart. 

“So perhaps I should ask you,” she said. “What is it that you want?” 

“You, my sweet wife.” He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “That’s all I want right now.” 

She looked up at him, the flames in the grate suddenly feeling cool compared to his gaze. His grey eyes turned molten in the dim light of the fire, leveling her with the look of desire to which she’d grown accustomed, yet which never failed to thrill her. But now more than simple want lingered there, and when Jon spoke, his words were a low rumble in his chest. 

“Sansa, I…” She responded with a nod of encouragement to his hesitation and the bob of his throat. “I love you.” 

The breath she’d been holding slipped audibly from her throat. She didn’t know why Jon’s words elicited a shock of surprise, other than that she could not recall the last time she had said those words, nor the last person she heard them from. Harry had never told her so, not even in the throes of passion. Maybe Petyr had in the midst of a ruse, but she thought it more likely her mother or father, the memory of them, their smiles, their kind words a pang in her chest.

“Truly?” she questioned, though she did not know why. There had been those who wanted her to love them, certainly; those who praised Alayne for her beauty and her charm; those who would have declared their love for her claim, for her title, for her name if they had known Sansa Stark lived. But Jon didn’t need those things—he had more than just a name, he had a home at long last, a crown and a kingdom—so perhaps she only wished for him to say it again.

He nodded. “Truly. Forgive me for neglecting to say so until now. I fear I may have forgotten, or perhaps I never knew…” 

She pressed a finger to his lips and swallowed the lump in her throat. “Jon, there is nothing to forgive. I love you as well.” 

She caught the hint of his smile, sweet and a bit sinful and full of awe all at once, before he closed the distance between them, and then she could feel the curve of his lips against her own. The first touch was soft and gentle, but when she opened her mouth to him, he deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers and sweeping her under a spell she could not escape nor wanted to break from. 

_Charm him, entrance him, bewitch him,_ she thought, remembering Littlefinger’s advice from long ago. She had listened then, and she had succeeded with Harry, for a time at least. Perhaps neither of them should have been surprised she failed in the end, though. Perhaps she had never been the best means to carry out his plans in the first place, as now she felt Jon had done the same to her, not through any sort of scheme or conspired manipulation, but rather because of who he had come to be. In her younger years, Sansa had never given much thought to the kind of man Jon would grow up as, preferring to dream of the knights and princes from the songs and the stories she loved or imagine the handsome young lord who would come along to Winterfell one day to sweep her off her feet. It was gloriously strange to realize that Jon had become the brave, strong, and kind man she’d always hoped for, and it was only too easy to give her heart and more to him. 

Jon untied her dressing gown and pushed the fabric apart, her nipples pebbling under the onslaught of cold air. Fortunately his hands were hot as he ran them over the silky nightshift she wore beneath, and she freed him from his jerkin, the leather hitting the cold stone floor with a slap, before she tugged the ends of his tunic out from the waist of his breeches and up over his head. 

Sansa recalled the times they had coupled frantically in stolen moments between their household duties, to clear the air after a petty disagreement, or after Jon returned from a day’s ride in the wolfswood or to a nearby holdfast. She did not mind such desperate, heated exchanges; Jon never left her unsatisfied, she had grown used to repairing her smallclothes that tended to incur damage in such haste, and thanks to their childhood games, they were well aware of plenty of private locations within the castle. 

She’d heard of battle lust, of men who thirsted for a woman after thwarting death or dealing it themselves, and she suspected perhaps something similar was why she and Jon so fervently hungered for each other. After all, as reigning monarchs, each day was trying, and during these times in the North every day was a test of survival. Besides, she could not hazard a guess of the number of times they had each already escaped death itself. It had lurked for Jon beyond the Wall and in the cold blades of his Night’s Watch brothers, and for her in the madness of Cersei and the fierce winds gusting through the open Moon Door of the Eyrie, so she supposed it seemed logical that they often sought to lose themselves in each other. 

This would not be any one of those instances, though. Jon’s kisses sang now of a different type of desperation. Tonight there were no meetings to be had, vassals to be placated, sewing for the smallfolk to be completed, solely the need to come together in the most intimate kind of way. 

She discarded Jon’s tunic, marveling at the feeling of the expanse of his skin pressed up against her own flushed chest as he drew her closer, his hands lifting the hem of her shift, exposing her thighs and smallclothes. She would have been chilled if not for Jon’s leg between her own, warming her as she rubbed wantonly against him, his cock hard alongside her hip. 

He’d left his hair unbound this evening, and she fisted her hands in it as he hoisted her into his arms, allowing her legs to wrap around his waist as he carried her to the bed, tripping out of his boots along the way. He had already loosened the laces of her smallclothes, and they fell away as he laid her on the cold furs that bristled rough against her back this far from the fire. Jon knelt at the edge of the bed, his breath warm against her exposed skin; she could feel herself already wet even though he had hardly touched her. 

She knew Harry had desired her, that he had certainly coveted her body, that he had found her an irresistible temptation. And yet no matter how many times Harry had called her comely, the way he’d sung her praises and showed her off like a prize in front of his bannermen, or all the occasions on which he had bedded her, he had never made her feel half so beautiful as she felt now in Jon’s arms, as he worshiped her with his hands, his touches reverent despite his callouses, how he used his lips to nip at her throat in veneration, with the way his eyes, now almost black, adored her. 

He started his descent at the juts of her collarbone, kissing the edge of each before he reached up to cup her breasts. They felt heavy in his hands as he rolled her nipples between his fingers before he dragged his tongue from her navel down to her mound. The air in the room may have been cool, but Jon’s heat, his evident desire, the way he whispered against her skin were enough to bring a light sheen to her skin. 

“Sansa,” he murmured, sinking to his knees and parting her legs so he could fit himself between them. “What you do to me…” 

If she could have sucked enough air into her lungs, she would have told him the same, that he made her heart race, that he could stoke the heat within her with a single gentle touch, that he seemed to have awakened the parts of her she thought long dead, the thoughts of dreams and fairytales come true Sansa had loved that had been replaced by Alayne’s harsh truths and disillusions. But even if she could have spoken them, there was no need for those words; Jon pushed a finger into her and she knew he could _feel._

Jon slipped lower, and being able to anticipate what he would do next did little to quell the sharp spike of pleasure that coursed through her as his mouth closed around her nub. The furs of the bed might have been rough, but Jon’s tongue was like velvet against her cunt. With no more than a few licks, he had her writhing beneath his attentions. 

Sansa no longer merely suspected Jon would spend an eternity with his tongue between her legs if he could, making her peak over and over. She knew he would for certain because he’d told her, night after night, the times when he had ducked beneath her skirts in the nook outside storerooms and when he had bared her to him as she sat in her chair in front of the fire, when they had laid under the stars beneath the panes of the newly-repaired glass gardens and the morning when he had woken her with such an indulgence. He’d told her in ragged breaths and wistful groans as he pleasured her each and every one of those times, all manner of words wanton and filthy spilling from his lips, making her cheeks flame, until she begged for him to give pause as he started again to nudge her towards yet another climax. That was not what she wished for this night, though, so she tugged at his hair. 

“Jon,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Please.” 

He needed no further encouragement, standing and removing his breeches and smallclothes before he joined her on the bed. He made quick work of the remainder of her clothing, undoing the laces on her night rail until it slipped away, leaving her bare, and discarding the thigh-high stockings that she had taken to wearing to bed during the long, cold nights. Sometimes Jon asked her to leave them on and she was never wroth to agree, but she understood tonight was not to be like those instances, that tonight he wished to see and feel all of her, and she wished the same of him. 

Jon sat straight and pulled her into his lap. She rose to her knees, relishing the way he brushed hot, hard, and heavy against her core as she slid herself easily along his length before she sheathed his cock. She gasped at the sudden fullness and wondered if she would ever tire of this feeling, the thrill that ignited her every time he made her his again… 

He groaned when she shifted her hips, taking in more of him, and once he was fully seated inside of her, she braced against his shoulders to push herself up so he nearly slipped from her and then she slowly sank down again, biting back a moan at the way he filled her. Jon seemed to appreciate her efforts from how his breath hitched and shuddered and the way he gripped her waist, so she repeated the motion, again and again until he panted and she was left breathless. 

She had certainly ridden him before, but never had the entirely bare expanse of his body been so intimate with hers, the ridges of his scars scraping across her belly, her breasts pressed up against his muscled chest, the thud of his heart palpable opposite of hers. She felt the kind of heat she had become familiar with over the past few moons coiling low in her belly, building with each languid slide along his length. 

When he caught her lips again, this time he kissed her soft and slow. She let herself get lost in the heady feeling; it was the kind of kiss she had dreamed of as a girl, when she allowed herself to drift away from the proper and consider the more indelicate aspects of the tales of princes and knights and how they treated their ladies. Even though far, far more than a simple kiss had transpired between her and Jon on many an occasion, she felt herself flush at the amount of passion Jon poured into into this one. 

Before things could slow too much, Sansa bucked her hips upward, and Jon worked his hand between them, finding that spot that made her keen and her back arch. 

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he sighed, making the curse sound like a caress. 

The scrub of his beard against her skin, the tangle of his tongue with hers, and the way his free hand curled into her hip, holding her to him with a kind of fierce need, all led to her undoing. She dug her nails into his back as her hands slipped, clutching him as everything inside her wound tighter with each time she sank down upon him, and then that coil snapped, the burdens of her stresses and worries and responsibilities melting away, overtaken by a wave of pure pleasure that left nothing but her clenching around him and her gasping Jon’s name. 

She moved his hand away, too sensitive from his ministrations for the pressure to continue, and sagged against him, boneless. 

“Come for me,” she murmured, the same way he always asked her, as though it was his most fervent wish. “I want you to come for me.” 

He pushed her backward against the pillows and drove into her with an intensity that matched his desirous gaze, sliding through the wetness her peak left behind. She drew her legs up along his sides so he could thrust deeper, and the noise that tore from his throat sounded more growl than grunt now. He lasted only a few mere moments more before his strokes grew erratic, shallow and then deep again, until he spilled in thick, hot spurts. 

The roaring fire had dimmed yet still crackled in the grate as Jon laid sprawled across her, the pair of them lingering in the twilight stage between wakefulness and sleep. 

“Show me again,” she murmured, twining his hair between her fingers as the sweat on his brow cooled. 

“Hm?” He lifted his head slightly from where it rested on her breasts to nuzzle her neck. 

“Show me again how you love me,” she clarified. 

He shifted onto his elbows, settling over her again and grinning. “Gladly, my love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also check out the beautiful artwork made by the wonderful [kingsnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsnow) for this chapter [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13598346/chapters/31345023)!


	9. Chapter 9

Sam and Gilly arrived within a sennight, and their presence within the walls of Winterfell seemed to at once lessen the frigid bite of winter. Sansa watched as Jon heartily embraced the man she knew he had come to see as a true brother, not just one in name. 

“What do I call you now?” Sam asked by way of greeting. “No more Lord Snow?”

“No more Lord Snow,” Jon agreed. 

“You can call him Your Grace, or His Royal Majesty,” Sansa said teasingly in Alayne’s glib voice. She tried not to think of all the things she called him in their chambers, or those he called her in hushed whispers— _beautiful girl, sweetheart, love._ “And do not forget his titles—King in the North, Lord of Winterfell and the Vale, nine hundred and ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, the Resurrected.”

“My wife japes,” he said, his lips curving in a smile, and her heart leapt at both the way he looked at her and the title he used to introduce her. “I still prefer Jon. And what of you? Slayer, is it? Or do you expect Maester now?”

Sam chuckled and glanced down sheepishly at the chain that encircled his neck. “Simply Sam will suffice.” 

Sansa noticed Sam must have been quick to forge his links; he had enough to loop around and join in a fluid circle, his knowledge and skill represented in little bits of black iron and silver, copper and gold, and one of rippled metal she suspected was crafted of Valyrian steel. He looked little like most of the Maesters Sansa was familiar with; he was of an age with Jon, not grey-haired and grizzled like Maester Luwin and Grand Maester Pycelle. Of course, there was also the oddity of the family that came along with him, but she’d long ago learned not to judge others for their choices, especially when they served to bring happiness, with what little anyone had left in the world anymore. 

_Aemon,_ they gave for the name of the older boy they brought, Dalla’s son. It may have seemed a strange choice for a child of the North, but Jon had said Sam loved books and stories, just as Sansa had as a girl, and she decided it was to her liking. 

The youngest babe who’d been born in the relative warmth of the south was still in swaddling clothes and had not a name yet, as was the way of the free folk, she’d learned. 

Once the boy Val had returned with her from her sojourns beyond the Wall was brought along to join them, Sansa watched Gilly reunite with her true son with tears in her own eyes, the two boys instantly taking to one another despite their long time apart, their reunion not marred at all by the strange sort of kinship they shared. 

“You haven’t given him a name, have you?” Gilly asked once her smile replaced her tears. 

“I have not. A promise is a promise, my lady,” Jon said. “And… I do not expect nor deserve your forgiveness.” 

Gilly nodded at Jon’s words, watching the boy Val had called “Monster” shriek with delight and settle alongside the son of the King-beyond-the-Wall on the furs of the floor to play with the wooden blocks there.

“Did you choose a name for him yet?” Sansa asked softly in an attempt to swallow down the lump that had formed in her throat. 

“Little Sam,” she said with a blush, glancing over at Sam, whose face flushed a deeper shade than hers as he offered her a sheepish smile in return. Sansa may not have known much of Sam beyond what Jon had told her or her cursory observations, but it was utterly clear how incredibly and sweetly besotted he was with Gilly and their family. She hoped that she and Jon would always share half the tenderness that they did, and that even if Alayne was not real, that at least that part of their relationship was true. 

“I think that’s a lovely name,” Sansa said. She and Gilly shared a second smile of their own, one of friendship and understanding. 

Enough time had passed where it no longer seemed odd for her to know her way so well around the keep and its winding passages, and she took great pride in showing Gilly her home, finally feeling the lady of the castle as the Sansa of old had always wished. Gilly seemed captivated by the expansiveness of Winterfell and all of its spectacles, from its double walls of thick, sturdy stone and soaring towers and spiraling turrets to the heart tree in the godswood and the repaired glass gardens, where shoots of flowers and vegetables were just starting to break through the soil even as winter had deadened the outside foliage. It was one thing to see such wonders in the South and quite another to see them in the North, in the very place Gilly had grown up hearing an odd handful of tales about. 

They had become fast friends once Sansa convinced Gilly to stop referring to her as “Your Grace.” Sansa found the other girl’s company immensely enjoyable; it had been a long time since she had friends, or ones she could trust, anyway. From the Vale she supposed she could count Mya Stone, even if she had preferred the company of her mules to mingling with companions near her own age, and Myranda Royce, at least until she had been married off to Lord Hersy and sent off to Newkeep. And though she had much enjoyed her company in the midst of the oft-felt loneliness she experienced during her time at the Gates of the Moon, she suspected the older girl moreso only tolerated her for the gossip, interest in her lord father, and out of her curiosity regarding her relationship with Harry the Heir than out of genuine, good-natured camaraderie. In any case, Sansa had always been challenged to maintain her guard around Randa, ever careful to avoid letting any mentions of King’s Landing or Queen Cersei drop when they spoke of matters regarding the capital and cautiously schooling her features once Jon’s reclamation of Winterfell and his subsequent ascension to King in the North became known. 

With Gilly there wasn’t need for any of that. Friendship came easily with her; not since Jeyne Poole could Sansa remember laughing at the mundane, relishing hours spent sewing in front of the fire and talking of everything from the morning’s snows to the looks they’d noticed exchanged between one of the serving girls and one of the stable boys at yesterday evening’s meal without nary a worry. Gilly had seen many of the places Sansa had longed to see as a girl and more: Braavos, Old Town, the Reach. Gilly asked what of White Harbor and the Vale, so they spoke of those and all those they wished to go, but there was one thing they heartily agreed upon: they both belonged in the North.

Passing time with Gilly and Sam was almost like having a family again, especially when Rickon would join them, though he remained as quiet and stoic as their father when he was confined indoors, saving his wildness now for the godswood or the forest where he spent most of his days oblivious to the freezing temperatures, honing his archery skills or tracking game with Shaggydog in the woods. He may have fancied himself too old to play with the boys as he had once with Bran and Arya, but even in silence he seemed to enjoy their company nonetheless. 

Often Jon and Sansa would offer to watch the children for Sam and Gilly so they could enjoy some quiet and time alone. Jon would hold the babe cradled in one arm while Little Sam and Aemon scampered about at his feet, playing one of a number of their regular games they had invented. Sansa had never bothered to learn the true rules, finding too much enjoyment in simply watching them to pay attention to something so banal, smiling as they giggled and squealed whenever they bested Jon or paused to pet a tolerant Ghost. 

Even as she had grown up dreaming of being a lady with her own castle, swathed in finery and worthy of the adoration of the smallfolk, Sansa had always known her duty would be to someday produce heirs for her lord husband. The idea had been as fanciful as all the rest when she’d been younger, but the joys of such a dream had faded once she’d flowered and the realities of that prospect set in. She had dreaded such with Joffrey and merely put the possibility off as part of a distant future with Harry, and as of her return to Winterfell and all that serving in her position entailed, the idea had been all but pushed entirely out of her mind. 

Certainly she understood the workings of it all, what her and Jon’s frequent couplings could lead to, but in reacquainting herself with Winterfell, welcoming their many visitors, and maintaining the façade of Alayne, there had been little time left to truly think about the actuality of such a possible result. Now, though, the prospect of holding a child in her arms, a little girl with red hair and grey eyes or perhaps a boy with black hair and bright blue eyes, sent a thrill through her. 

As she watched Jon with the children, she realized with a jolt that she did not want to merely bear the heir of Winterfell, the future king or queen who would one day inherit the North, or the next great hero to carry on the family legacy. Nor did she find herself feeling as though she had to merely accept such as a burden with which she had been saddled on the basis of her family name and gender. And she did not want a babe with Jon for his title as King in the North or because of his status as the last male in the Stark line, but because of who he was, his kindness and his tenderness, his strength and his stability. 

As the boys climbed up Jon’s legs and hung off his arms, or as they settled to instead play with their wooden figurines or drift off to sleep as the night grew late, she already found herself imagining what it would be like to watch him lark about with their own son or daughter, teaching him or her or perhaps even one of each to fight and ride and rule the North just as their father had years ago in another lifetime. The mere idea that such a happiness could await in their future despite winter, in spite of all the darkness they had faced, made her heart swell with so much joy she didn’t know what to do with it all besides dream some more.

 

 

If Jon had been reluctant to share the news of Rickon’s return before, then the missive from Castle Black forced his hand. Along with the end of winter’s thaw and the return of its vengeance had come the dead. The report from Castle Black told of how clusters of wights had been spotted along the Wall, of how sometimes blue eyes shone in the haunted forest in the night, concealed while the trees that kept their cover crept ever closer without enough men to beat them back. The Wall still stood strong, its ice thick as ever amid the cold, but their other defenses ran low—the oil used to fill barrels of pitch starting to scrape the bottom, torches remaining in short supply, and fires guttering out for lack of wood. 

_Send men,_ it read in conclusion, with _(Or women willing to fight)_ hastily scrawled in as an afterthought. 

“How can I ask for more when there’s nothing more to be had?” Jon growled once he had read it aloud to Sansa and Sam. “I cannot in good conscience send more men away to their deaths.” 

Sansa peered over Jon’s shoulder, noting he had skipped reading aloud the part where the letter writer mentioned that in the absence of any logs or branches, the Watch had begun to burn some of the aged, illegible books from the library at Castle Black. “It seems as though we may not have much of a choice.” 

Over their previous nights spent together, Sam had shared with them what he knew of the happenings in the south. He told them of a king Tommen now married to Margaery Tyrell, of how he ruled only in name alone, while Cersei held the true strings to the kingdom, and of how there had been stirrings of dragons rising again, creeping inward from the coasts as Aegon the Conqueror himself once had. Sansa did not know which to fear more. On one hand, she was exceedingly familiar with the formidable dangers the first presented, and while the second seemed like folly, she could not discount the threat of its existence, not when so much from the stories Old Nan told them as children had come true. And now she was beginning to understand their precarious position, trapped in between the potential of fire creeping up from the south and the cold bearing down from the North, and either they could sit and wait to be consumed or stand and fight for their survival as northerners had for centuries. 

“Our people have no horses, no food, no coin to purchase either left to spare,” Jon said. Sansa could have reminded him that he didn’t need to ask them for anything—that he could have given orders, issued commands, drawn on their commitment to do what was in the best interest of the North. But she understood why Jon never would, not even for something as imperative as this. He would do anything and everything in his power to avoid being stabbed in the back again by daggers in the dark. 

“You may be surprised by their response,” Sansa said. “You will never know unless you ask.” She could feel the words dredge up from somewhere, Alayne’s thoughts creeping up as plans began to spin in her mind. Secretly she wondered if that part of her would ever go away; even further deep down she wondered if she truly wanted it to. 

“And how should I ask?” Jon said, his brow furrowed deep in an expression he had worn more and more often as of late.

“Our people need reassurances as much as we do of their support,” Sansa said. And then Alayne’s eloquent words had poured out, where she explained how she saw no better way to raise morale and rally support than to share with them the news of Rickon’s return, that if Wyman Manderly had cared enough solely for Rickon’s return to the North to declare for Stannis as Ser Davos claimed, then she thought a few others would be willing to contribute a bit of what they had to protect them all. “We’ll tell them no different than what we discussed. Rickon will decide for himself whether he wants to wear the crown of the North once he comes of age, but if we do not take action in the present, we may not live to witness that moment.” 

Jon was reluctant to call the lords back to Winterfell only to ask for more upon their arrival, in the midst of winter and when many had been present for his wife’s welcoming feast not so long ago. Instead Sansa and Sam helped him pen a note to send out word along with an open invitation to come to Winterfell at their leisure if they wished to lay eyes on the boy for themselves and offer their supplies and services before the king. 

“If they are capable of the travel, they will come,” Sansa told him. “They’ll come if it means standing in the king’s good graces and a few days’ worth of food and shelter for some of their extra mouths to feed.” 

She could tell Jon did not care much for the last part of her advice, but he agreed nonetheless. She would never ask Jon to swallow his pride, merely that he do what was best for their people. 

They issued a separate invitation to those in the castle and its surroundings for an occasion to discuss the future of the North, and on the day itself, as many gathered in the Great Hall as it could hold. Not only were some of the masters who occupied lands surrounding Winterfell in attendance, but Lady Cerwyn made the ride along with Lady Eddara all the way from Torrhen’s Square. They now waited amongst the men-at-arms and crofters come from the wolfswood, the wildlings and the smallfolk, all sitting alongside each other on the long wooden benches without regard to status or position. 

Their invitation had made it clear that any and all in the North were admitted through the gates and welcomed to partake in Winterfell’s bread and mead. Sansa watched them converse, Lady Jonelle talking with a spearwife hesitantly yet quite civilly, one of Winterfell’s gate guards comparing his heavy mail with the leather and bone-studded armor of one of the free folk, children from wintertown playing with children dressed in the styles of nobility. She felt a streak of pride in realizing her and Jon had brought this to fruition, that they initiated this tenuous but quite real tangible peace to peoples torn for centuries by hatred and misunderstanding. 

She wondered why some of them had come—to catch a glimpse of Winterfell from inside its walls, of Jon, of her… It seemed silly that even in winter, even when death came for them all, that things like that would matter. She suspected that for many of them it was to keep up appearances just as much as it was for them to issue such an invitation, to show that even in trying times like this, especially in times like this, Winterfell stood steadfast and the Starks still presided over the North with all their strength just as they had for thousands of years. She remembered the promise she’d made to herself as a child, of how when she grew to be a lady she would make the small folk love her, and while she did not think asking them to give up what little they had would particularly endear her to them in any favorable way, at least here they had a seat at the table and a voice that would be heard. 

She was struck once more by the way Jon looked like a king as he settled into the chair beside her, the crown of twisted bronze he wore only on occasion on his head. She was glad for her own crown to be perched atop her head on this day, the way she had arranged her hair helping to both hold it firmly to her scalp and cover up the bits starting to grow in red again, the dark metal glinting against her otherwise dull locks. With this front, there would be no doubt who commanded here, no question of who reigned in the North. She could only hope that they had arrived with their minds open and that their ears would be willing to listen. 

The hall fell silent as Jon stood and started without any unnecessary preamble. No time existed any longer for any sort of useless formalities. 

“You may have heard rumors of the boy who arrived in Winterfell with the black wolf,” Jon began, the echo of his voice muted by the sheer number of bodies in the hall. “Some of these rumors held that he was a wildling, or a Skagosi cannibal, or sent as a spy from the south.” 

A titter ran through the crowd. While Sansa listened to Jon’s words, Alayne watched for their reactions.

“These tales are not true. Sometimes the hardest truths to recognize are the ones that stand clearly before us, and today I bid you to see the truth in this matter and another. He is my brother, Rickon Stark, returned to his home, and the lands that will one day be his. I take great joy in assuring you that once more there is truly a Stark in Winterfell,” Jon said, his expression devoid of the delight he claimed to feel. 

That made little matter, though. Sansa watched as some of the faces that had been stern and stoic before morphed to joy, while to others this seemed meaningless, yet another fact amongst a sea of unfamiliarity. She understood, or rather Alayne did, since to her Rickon meant scarcely more than he did to most of those assembled. 

Jon hardly paused to allow this information to sink in, forging ahead even before the hall quieted again. “The line of northern succession is only the first matter we address today. This is the second.” He held up the note from the Wall in his hand. 

“The cold has returned, and with it, so have they. Or perhaps they bring it with them, I do not know,” Jon continued, his voice imbued with all the frostiness of winter, nothing like the one of sweet honey he used abed that melted her bones. “I only know that the Others are no longer a myth, nor are they a problem that we can leave for our children, or our children’s children. They threaten the Wall now. They threaten the North. And they threaten every single one of you.”

“I do not stand before you today to sing the glories of the North, to revel in the history of House Stark, or to soothe you with tales of the peace and prosperity that await us while the rest of the realm burns. When their army comes, the dead come along with them… all of the dead, giants, mammoths, all manner of things that roam the Lands of Always Winter.” 

Whether Jon intended for his voice to deepen and rise in volume or he did so unconsciously, Sansa did not know. “And all that stands between us and them is a Wall that can no longer defend itself, miles of open, uninhabited lands, and snows that they trek through with the ease of a fish swimming downstream. I may not know much of what is befitting of a king, but I know that it is not seemly to beg. However, I am left with little choice. There are few things that repel their kind: fire, dragonglass, Valyrian steel. I ask you today for these and as much timber and oil that you may spare, and for the service of any man or woman over the age of twelve who wishes to fight and defend the North.” 

Sansa placed her hand atop his for a brief moment as a reminder of what they had discussed, of how they hoped to convince these people to join them in the fight against an invisible foe. 

The next words still seemed to come stilted and stiff for him. “And now… what questions may you have?” 

A short, squat man with rough features rose to his feet. Sansa recognized him as one of the men whose families had been given lands and empty titles by the Boltons as a reward for their aid in holding Winterfell and keeping order in the North. She had spoken with him a single time, when he’d told her of how his son had been in attendance at Ramsay’s wedding to Arya Stark and how he had been one of Ramsay’s brave men who had perished in the fight against Stannis. Once Roose and Ramsay’s bodies had gone cold, though, he had taken no time in offering his fealties to Jon instead, and even as he questioned their loyalties, Jon had seen little reason in stripping this man of what he had been given and creating further chaos when he won back Winterfell.

“My lord, you call for women, too? Women to go to the Wall? Do you intend this as a jape?” he said in a tone of jest with a falsely light smile and a knowing look, as though surely Jon understood what he meant. “In the past—”

Jon ignored addressing the slight with which the other man had led in favor of a scathing glare. “With all due respect, this is not the past,” Jon said in the voice Sansa knew Sam had deemed Lord Snow’s. “This is not the winter of our memories, nor one that even our fathers or grandfathers could recall. Unless you claim to be of an age with Bran the Builder?” 

The man’s expression wilted as he faltered and withdrew, and another stood up on the opposite side of the hall. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but have you ever actually _seen_ —”

“I have.” Sansa turned to where Sam had piped up from further down the table. She noticed the usual note of fear that slipped into his voice when he spoke of the white walkers was gone, along with the way he tended to tremble whenever he recalled his memory of them. Instead it was replaced with a brave show of fortitude. “Their dead slew a hundred of my brothers at the Fist of the First Men, and they followed, tracking those who lived and turning those who didn’t as they went. They’re… eerie, unnatural things, made of ice and eyes that glow brighter than any star. Their swords are sharpened into an ice that no steel, no mail can defend, and they emerge in silence, in a pale white mist, in a cold that would make taking a dip in Long Lake seem warm. I can go on, if you wish.”

Jon gave a grateful nod to Sam and pulled his glove from his sword hand to show the skin there faded from being burnt. “And I’ve seen their creatures for myself, protecting Lord Commander Mormont. Do any of you wish to call us liars?” 

It appeared no one did, but whether they truly believed or not, Sansa could not say. 

“And what of the south? The Lannisters still hole up in the Red Keep, justice come for Joffrey and Lord Tywin but not the rest,” said one of the men who had arrived in Winterfell with House Karstark’s host for her welcoming feast and had never left. “And the stories they tell… plots in Dorne? Dothraki and dragons? Do we dare wait until they come North and force our submission? Because I will _not._ ” 

“I understand your concern,” Jon said, “however, the south is beyond our reach and I do not think it wise to fight a war on two fronts.” 

A hushed murmur spread across the hall, worry on the faces of those who evidently believed the tales of dragons resurrected and anger reflected on those who found the white walkers to be the true danger, not some myth from a foreign land. She remembered the meeting of the lords declarant, how Alayne served without speaking, a silent shadow. Her life had depended on her performance then; all of theirs did now. 

“I think…” she said before she realized the words had slipped nor the way they echoed from her seat on the dais. 

Jon raised a hand to silence the anxious crowd, and the look he gave her now of interest, respect, admiration, thrilled her even more than the ones of desire she’d learned to crave. He motioned for her to continue, so she cleared her throat and did. “We must remain united. It is the only thing that we have against them, whichever _them_ you find to be more unnerving. We may not know this enemy to the North or those that threaten us from across the Narrow Sea, but Queen Cersei would love nothing more than to sow discord among us. And I can assure you that on any front, they will wish for every excuse to tear us asunder. Let us not give them a single one.” 

“Aye,” said Tormund Giantsbane from down below, raising his flask of fermented goat’s milk. 

“Hear, hear,” confirmed the man who’d asked after the Others. 

Once any objections ceased, Sansa led Jon down from the dais into the midst of their guests, to greet them and thank them for paying their visits to Winterfell. As Sansa bent to allow two young girls to see her crown up close, she felt eyes on her and overheard the conversation of the two men who lingered behind her. 

“Truly a queen,” one praised. 

“Truly Lord Littlefinger’s clever daughter,” said another. 

Sansa had grown accustomed during her time with Petyr to men speaking as though she were not in the room, so this should have been no different, but it made her stomach clench and her cheeks burn. 

_I’m not,_ Sansa thought, all while never letting the smile slip from her face, repeating the words as she once repeated her name Alayne until it etched itself irrevocably on the tip of her tongue, _I’m not, I’m not. I’m a Stark._

 

 

Moments after Sansa dismissed her handmaiden and sank into her steaming hot bath she heard Jon return to their chambers. He’d come from meeting with a truculent Ser Overton who had made the ride from his lands through the wolfswood and the snow when he received his raven, demanding to see Rickon with his own eyes and reassurances that Jon did not intend to take the youngest Stark’s rightful crown from him. Jon had kindly but firmly informed him he was not in a position to make demands of the king, but complied anyhow, and if all had gone as planned, Ser Overton would have left happily, both having committed some of his household’s supplies and men to the effort at the Wall and feeling as though he’d earned the appreciation and honor of the king and the rest of the North. That was, if Jon had been able to play his part as well as they’d rehearsed it last night, though he’d perhaps had some other motivations in mind at that moment which encouraged him to make quick practice of perfecting his performance. 

“How did you fare?” she asked as she heard him shake the snow from his cloak and remove it along with his sword.

“About as well as could be expected,” Jon replied. He appeared around the edge of the privacy screen that concealed the tub and privy in their chambers. “After sweetening him with some false flatteries, Ser Overton agreed to send any of his spare men without trained professions or families to join our forces. How many that truly gives us is yet to be seen.” 

She waved him forward when he hesitated to approach the bath. 

“I wish he would have been amenable to meeting with you instead. It should be you,” Jon said, his lips pressing to her temple with a soft kiss as he pulled over a stool to sit beside her. “You should be the one sending the ravens, you should be the one to greet our guests, you should be the one to whom they kneel.” 

She smiled at him, hoping to earn one of his in return. “We have discussed this. I already do all of those things.”

His brow only furrowed further. “Not for yourself… not for Sansa.” 

She reached over the side of the tub and poured scented oil into the water, rose and lavender and one of citrus. The fragrance was lovely enough, but in truth they were intended to conceal the odor of the dye. 

Jon had procured a kind of pigment from Essos that would stain her locks darker and last longer, but each time she only mixed in a few precious drops with her usual crushed walnut shells she used to color her hair a dull brown. She didn’t know if he could obtain more or how long she would have to make it last, through the winter or more. He’d made his excuses enough in the first place, whether he claimed it was to dye clothing to blend in with the deadened woods or something else equally mundane. She’d even teased him perhaps his couriers might think it was for him to dye over his own greys. 

She had become proficient in darkening her own locks once they’d moved their household in the Eyrie down to the Gates of the Moon; there was no one there she trusted enough to keep her secret, no way more secure. Even now in Winterfell, she had made a habit of sending away her attendants whenever she bathed, laughing that she was only a bastard girl from the Vale who needed no special treatment and that she had gotten by for many a year with caring for herself, or winking that if she required help she could always call on her husband, the king, for his assistance. Even the most reluctant would then blush and agree to let her alone. 

Jon sat now, watching her with his own eager eyes as she wet her hair and rinsed the dye through. 

“Let me,” he said, and she felt a familiar pulse between her legs in response to the roughness of his voice. The feel of his hand and the contrast between the smooth, burned parts and the callouses of his fingers and palm sliding down the oil-softened plane of her back made her skin flush in a way that had nothing to do with the steam rising from the water. 

He combed his fingers through her hair and traced the rivulets of water as they ran down her spine, his sleeve dipping into the water. He cursed. 

“You could find a way to avoid that, you know,” she said, turning so he could see her smirk and catch a glimpse of her breasts. 

This time, he returned her expression and stripped off his own shirt in reply. 

“I simply meant you could roll up your sleeves, that was all,” she shrugged, grinning as she ran her eyes over his chest and torso that not even the vicious scars there could mar. He splashed a bit of water at her in retaliation, and her grin turning to a giggle and then a gasp when he slipped his hand between her legs. 

He slid it down to the hair that covered her mound, her hair there still as red as Sansa’s on a summer day, his ministrations both pleasing and infuriating. 

“Insatiable,” she scolded, slapping his hand away. 

Jon chuckled, the sound no more than a low rumble, stirring her blood and making even her exposed skin hot in the cool air.

In moments like these he seemed so little like the Jon she once knew; that quiet, sullen boy she had grown up with seemed like someone else entirely. Just as she hoped he thought seldom of the naïve, pretentious girl he had known her to be, she preferred not to dwell much on those times, but rather thought of the man he’d become now—someone strong and brave, gentle and loving. She wondered whether it was the Night’s Watch that had changed him or whether it was what had come after, his death and resurrection, that made him seem less distant and more amiable, more ardent, more _alive_ than she ever could have imagined. 

“Do you ever think about after?” he asked, his hands having returned to knead her shoulders. There were many afters that entertained her thoughts: after Cersei fell from the Iron Throne, after winter passed, after peace returned to the Seven Kingdoms, too many to name. But he clarified, “When you no longer must be Alayne.”

She had once, at first when she’d gone to the Vale, but not now, not for a long time. She knew that being Sansa again might well bring another war upon them, with more enemies at their doorstep, these very much alive but perhaps just as dangerous as the dead men. And even though Jon had said who she was made no matter to him, that was easy to say when no one but them knew the truth. That was another lesson she had learned long ago: Alayne was easy to love, and Sansa not so much. 

“You wouldn’t have to stay,” he offered with the sort of gentle kindness she associated with only him and Father. “I know you always dreamed of seeing the Seven Kingdoms, of lively households filled with music and dancing, of castles and knights and tournaments.” 

“I dream of happiness,” she said, sinking backward into his touch. 

“I wish that for you as well,” he said. She looked down at where her hair, heavy with soap and water, flowed through his fingers. The thought struck her as funny that without her dark hair she would look both less his sister and more at once. 

“Your crown could stand on its own, then,” he said, seeming to know where her thoughts strayed. She wondered if this was what worried him, not losing his crown nor his title, but his home and her. 

Winterfell was never meant to be hers; she had known that from as far back as she could remember. Then she had looked forward to someday seeing the place that would be her home, certain that it would be beautiful, more beautiful than simple stone set amongst woods and snow. She had imagined fields of beautiful flowers, castles standing tall on cliffs along the sea, and the Red Keep with its glimmering bricks and all its pageantry. Even when she had dreamt of returning, when she had known no other place would ever be as much of a home as here, she had never pictured it as belonging to her. She had envisioned it full of her family again, a place safe and warm and comforting where she was no stranger, no outsider, where she would never be alone. Those were the things she desired most now, and strangely enough, they were not so different from those she had always wanted, even after all this time. 

“If they would even have me, after what I did to betray Father’s confidences, after deceiving them with this ruse, after…” _Us,_ she left unspoken, when she could not bring herself to call what they were doing a sin. 

“They will,” Jon said with certainty. “If that is what you wish, of course.” 

She knew he spoke true, that he would step aside if she asked him, but she never would. This was where he belonged; in any case, there was nowhere else, not even the Wall any longer, not after what he had suffered at the hands of his own brothers. 

“Or if you wish to travel, east to Essos or south to Dorne… I will not deny you, Sansa.” She knew he spoke true. Jon wished to give her all that had been taken from her: her freedom, her very existence, the entire world. How ironic that she would only want him. 

“This is my home,” she said. “I am not leaving Winterfell.” _Nor you._

Jon smiled at that. “If you are certain that is your wish.” 

_It is,_ she thought as she leaned back to slant her mouth against his, and with each slide of their lips, her heart agreed: _It is, it is, it is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *peeks out from behind hands and hopes this was okay* I know it's been 84 years... Thank you so much to all those still reading, leaving kudos, and especially commenting! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [like we're still dead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639562) by [kingsnow (bravegentlestrong)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravegentlestrong/pseuds/kingsnow)




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